Abstract

Energ y economics is a specialized field used to make decisions on energy purchases, selection of competing energy generation technologies, and financing of energy technologies. This study carried out the economic analysis of combined packed bed energy storage and solar collector system byusingthe design and operational parameters such as concrete bed size, cylindrical cross sectional area, concrete size, air flow rate and void fraction.This was accomplished by investigating the effects of the above parameters on the total energy stored and the blower cost together with daily storage system cost per unit energy stored in the concrete bed for the winter climatic conditions of Trinidad. Spherical shaped concrete of three different sizes were used in this analysis over varying air flow rate. It was discovered that spherical shaped concrete of size 0.065m diameter has the highest blower cost of $TT37.83/day at 0.045m3/s due to low porosity and high pressure drop while concrete size 0.11m diameter has the lowest blower cost of $TT0.16/day at 0.0094m3/s.Also, spherical shaped concrete of size 0.065m diameter has the highest storage system daily cost of $TT38.83/day at 0.045m3/s while concrete size 0.11m diameter has the lowest daily cost of $TT1.16/day at 0.0094m3/s.