Gain-scheduled control of a solar power plant

The application of gain-scheduled control to a pilot-scale solar power plan t is described. A field of parabolic collectors focus the solar radiation o nto a tube where oil is pumped through in order to collect the solar power. The control problem is to keep the temperature of the oil leaving the fiel d at its desired value by manipulating the oil pump flow rate. It is shown that gain-scheduling can effectively handle the plant nonlinearities, using high-order local linear ARX models that form the basis for the design of l ocal linear controllers using pole placement. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd . All rights reserved.