ENGG378/948 Sustainable Energy Technologies
Solar Thermal Plant Design assignment
Due: Friday semester week 13 by 4pm
Submission: Online through the subject e-learning site
Your assignment task is to design a 10MWe solar thermal power plant for the Illawarra region. The design is to be at the conceptual, not detailed design level. Discussion of technical and non-technical issues related to siting and generation should be included.
This is a group assignment to be completed in teams of 5 or 6 students. Teams must be selected by the end of the week 3 tutorial. Group member lists should be sent to the subject coordinator. A group discussion board will be set up where weekly minutes of meetings must be uploaded from week 4. A template is provided for this purpose. Any later claims related to poor group function and group or team member problems must be substantiated by the meeting minutes. If group problems cannot be resolved during semester, marks may be adjusted to reflect individual contributions.
You are to present your design in a report of between 6,000-8,000 words. The report is to be submitted by one of the group members through the subject e-learning site as a pdf file with active links to all online sources cited. A word-count and all group member’s names and student numbers should be clearly visible on the first page.
Some of the key elements that should be considered in the design and included in your report are:
• Siting of the plant
• Calculations and data related to the solar resource available at the site
• Type of solar collector determined most suitable (with accompanying justification)
• Solar tracking scheme utilised (if determined feasible)
• Size of the collector (mirror area, pipe lengths etc)
• Energy storage capacity requirements
• Schematic of the plant layout
Please note that any submissions in groups smaller or larger than that specified will not be accepted unless prior approval has been obtained. Assignments will be automatically run through the plagiarism detection program Turnitin upon submission through the subject e-learning site. Harvard style referencing should be used in the report.
Assessment guidelines:
Minutes of meetings (submitted through the discussion board, not attached to the report) 10%
Report
Evidence of use of sound design processes 20%
Design calculations 20%
Discussion of non-technical design issues 20%
Plant layout schematic 10%
Clarity of expression (spelling, grammar, document structure etc) 10%
Referencing (suitability, correct, consistent use of Harvard style etc) 10%
Dr Brad Stappenbelt July 2016