Techno-economic comparison of solar organic Rankine cycle (ORC) and photovoltaic (PV) systems with energy storage

Solar field area & storage capacity was varied to assess impact on techno-economic performance of the two solar technologies.
PV yielded a minimum LCOE of 0.12 USD/kWh and a CUF of 0.27.
s-ORC yielded a minimum LCOE of 0.19 USD/kWh, with a CUF of 0.56. LCOE of PV, for a similar CUF is 0.26 USD/kWh.
Results evince that s-ORC potentially offers reliable decentralized power supply due to cost-effectiveness of thermal storage.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.renene.2017.06.107

(*Vikas R. Patil, Vijay Irappa Biradar, R. Shreyas, Pardeep Garg, and Matthew S. Orosz are other authors of this paper.)