Geothermal-Solar Hybrid Proof of Concept Retrofit

This is a proposal for the development of a geothermal-solar thermal pilot plant to be built on the Oregon Institute of Technology campus, a solar thermal array supplementing the geothermal power facilities. The recent award to ENEL for a geothermal-solar PV hybrid system had come to my attention and rekindled my hope for a hybrid system such as I had conceived many years ago. Hearing the papers and in conversation with Toni Boyd, Alex Sifford, and Guy Nelson, as well as the interest of the students of Oregon Tech it seemed most appropriate that such a hybrid system could be best implemented at the Oregon Tech campus. It can serve multiple purposes, both for power generation, a teaching and research tool, and proof-of-concept. This project will be the addition of a concentrating solar collector array of a series of three rows in parallel circulating to the geothermal power house where a heat exchanger loop going to the generator will be connected to boost the thermal temperature of the geothermal fluid. The addition of this system to the existing geothermal power plant will enable the additional documentation and collection of valuable data on the gains to the output of the ORC generator under normal use regimes of campus heating and other load factors that detract from the systems performance and overall efficiency. The existing Pratt & amp; Whitney generator is rated at 280 kw. The current heating load and flows of the geothermal fluids do not produce the rated capacity of output.