Electrification of remote communities is a great challenge worldwide. Their reliance on economically and environmentally unfavourable diesel generators makes these communities attractive target markets for renewables. Concentrating solar thermal (CST) plants operating on supercritical CO₂ (s-CO₂) Brayton power cycles have been proposed for their high efficiency, compactness, compatibility with natural air-cooling, and capability of being built at a small size without significant efficiency penalties. Thermal energy storage (TES) technology can mitigate intermittency problems. This study aims to identify the optimal configuration of hybrid CST and diesel generation (DG) for different types of remote locations based on annual simulations involving key system design features including solar multiple, TES size, and CST size. One novelty in this study is the inclusion of actual weather information and load demand profiles for selected potential locations. Another is that a realistic economic model for s-CO₂ power blocks for small to medium sizes, based on accurate cost data, is presented. More importantly, a realistic representation of the s-CO₂ turbine, which includes isentropic efficiencies varying at off-design conditions, is used. This facilitates a study into the effects that the inclusion of realistic off-design turbine information has on the thermodynamic and techno-economic performances of the system. This is done by comparing the simulation results with results obtained using a conventional method that uses a constant turbine efficiency. This paper presents the optimal system configurations offering the lowest levelised cost of energy (LCOE) obtained using three-variable exhaustive search optimisation. The results show that the system is an economically favourable option and provides substantial environmental benefits.

偏远社区的电气化是世界范围内的一项巨大挑战。他们对经济和环境不利的柴油发电机的依赖使这些社区成为可再生能源的有吸引力的目标市场。使用超临界 CO ₂ (s-CO ₂) 布雷顿动力循环因其高效、紧凑、与自然空气冷却的兼容性以及能够以小尺寸建造而不会显着降低效率而被提出。热能储存 (TES) 技术可以缓解间歇性问题。本研究旨在根据涉及关键系统设计特征（包括太阳能倍数、TES 尺寸和 CST 尺寸）的年度模拟，为不同类型的偏远地区确定混合 CST 和柴油发电 (DG) 的最佳配置。本研究的一个新颖之处在于包含了选定潜在位置的实际天气信息和负载需求概况。另一个是 s-CO _{2的现实经济模型}介绍了基于准确成本数据的中小型电源模块。_{更重要的是，s-CO 2}的真实表现使用的涡轮机包括在非设计条件下变化的等熵效率。这有助于研究包含现实的非设计涡轮机信息对系统的热力学和技术经济性能的影响。这是通过将模拟结果与使用恒定涡轮效率的传统方法获得的结果进行比较来完成的。本文介绍了使用三变量详尽搜索优化获得的可提供最低平准化能源成本 (LCOE) 的最佳系统配置。结果表明，该系统是一种经济上有利的选择，并提供了可观的环境效益。