India has incorporated renewable energy sources like solar and wind in its energy mix in order to achieve its ambitious plan to set up 175 GW of renewable energy by 2022 to reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases. Among the solar technologies for power generation, solar photovoltaic (SPV) is considered and large SPV parks are deployed around the country. Some of the drawbacks of deploying large‐scale SPV parks are discussed in the manuscript. Because of the intermittency of SPV and wind, there is a backup resource of fossil fuel fired thermal plants that are ramped up or down to meet the electricity demand in the grid, especially the peak demand. The manuscript proposes that India has to consider solar thermal technology that can be ramped up and down, namely, the molten‐salt solar tower technology (STT). Based on the direct solar irradiance data there are about 6000 sq. km of land with 7.5 to 8.0 kWh/m2/day and about 12 000 sq. km with 7.0 to 7.5 kWh/m2/day where such STT plants can be set up. Cost analysis demonstrates that the capital cost of STT plant is roughly ₹ 389 million per MW. This is quite competitive compared to the nuclear and coal thermal technologies because these technologies have high operational costs.

中文翻译：

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熔盐塔技术可行性初步评估

印度已将太阳能和风能等可再生能源纳入其能源结构，以实现其到 2022 年建立 175 吉瓦可再生能源以减少温室气体排放的雄心勃勃的计划。在太阳能发电技术中，考虑了太阳能光伏（SPV），并在全国范围内部署了大型 SPV 园区。手稿中讨论了部署大型 SPV 园区的一些缺点。由于 SPV 和风能的间歇性，化石燃料火力发电厂有一个备用资源，这些火力发电厂可以加速或减速以满足电网中的电力需求，尤其是高峰需求。手稿建议印度必须考虑可升降的太阳能热技术，即熔盐太阳能塔技术（STT）。根据太阳直接辐照度数据，大约有 6000 平方公里的土地（7.5 至 8.0 千瓦时/平方米/天）和约 12 000 平方公里的 7.0 至 7.5 千瓦时/平方米/天的土地可以设置此类 STT 发电厂。成本分析表明，STT 工厂的资本成本约为每兆瓦 3.89 亿卢比。与核能和煤热技术相比，这是相当有竞争力的，因为这些技术的运营成本很高。