## 3 Results and Discussion
### Economic Performance of the Dry-Cooled System at the Six Studied Sites in India  
The economic results from the simulation are summarized in Table 2. The results suggest that the modelled power plants at all sites are economically feasible since all sites recorded a positive NPV. Bhopal, however, recorded the highest NPV among all the six sites, which indicates that a project at that site will break even at a faster rate than the other sites. The financial optimization of the 100 MW STPP solar thermal power plants are also represented in Figure 6. From the data of each potential site, LCOE is optimized by varying the SM from 1 to 5, with an increment 0.2. The results indicate that the value of LCOE decreases as the SM increases for the given TES capacity. The decreasing trend is followed until a minimum LCOE value is achieved, after which the trend starts to increase again. The SM at which the minimum LCOE is obtained can be said to be the optimal SM for that TES.  
Figure 6 shows the economic comparison of the six sites in this study. The LCOE under the optimization configuration in the Bhopal, Jhansi, Jalandhar, Srikakulam, West Medinipur, and Erode sites can be minimized to 12.01 cents/kWh, 12.25 cents/kWh, 13.87 cents/kWh, and 12.51, 13.74, 13.11 cents/kWh for SM within the region of 1.4-1.8. Comparing the outcomes at the various sites with the literature, the obtained LCOE are seen to be relatively higher in terms of residual fuel oil (RFO), which is around 10 USD cents/kWh for India. Therefore, in the current analysis, we have included an additional fee of 25-30 USD/tCO\({}_{2}\) emission, which is the average cost of CO\({}_{2}\) emission for 37 countries [60]. After adding the CO\({}_{2}\) emissions cost for RFO-based power generation, the resulting LCOE becomes comparable to the LCOE obtained under the optimized configuration of the proposed CSP plant. Therefore, the government of India needs to adopt several policies based on CSP generation technologies.  
\begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c c c c c} \hline \hline  & **Bhopal** & **Jhansi** & **Jalandhar** & **Srikakulam** & **West** & **Erode** \\ \hline
**Metric** & **Value** & **Value** & **Value** & **Value** & **Value** & **Value** \\ \hline Levelized Cost of & & & & & & \\ Electricity (LCOE) (nominal), cents & 15.22 & 15.69 & 18.88 & 16.18 & 18.84 & 16.36 \\ per kWh & & & & & & \\ \hline Levelized Cost of & & & & & & \\ Electricity (LCOE) (real), cents per & 12.77 & 13.17 & 15.88 & 13.59 & 15.82 & 13.74 \\ kWh & & & & & & \\ \hline Net present value (NPV), USD & 15,312,089 & 15,311,053 & 15,307,957 & 15,310,368 & 15,307,712 & 15,310,214 \\ \hline Internal rate of & & & & & & \\ return (IRR), \% & 24.2 & 24.01 & 24.17 & 24.13 & 24.21 & 24.19 \\ \hline Year investor IRR & & & & & & \\ achieved & 20 & 20 & 20 & 20 & 20 & 20 \\ \hline IRR at the end of & & & & & & \\ project, \% & 25.7 & 25.07 & 25.05 & 25.06 & 25.05 & 25.06 \\ \hline Net capital cost, & & & & & & \\ USD & 823,137,408 & 823,105,792 & 823,000,384 & 823,084,864 & 823,003,904 & 823,080,192 \\ \hline Equity, USD & 247,109,488 & 297,141,136 & 247,109,488 & 247,134,848 & 247,110,544 & 247,133,456 \\ \hline Debt, USD & 575,890,880 & 575,964,672 & 575,890,880 & 575,950,016 & 575,893,312 & 575,946,752 \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table}
Table 2: Cont.