Concentrating photovoltaic retrofit for existing parabolic trough solar collectors: Design, experiments, and levelized cost of electricity

Hybrid CSP/PV Receivers: Converting Optical Spillage to Electricity

This paper evaluates a novel receiver design concept that implements photovoltaic (PV) cells on heat shields and bellows shields to capture optical spillage from central receiver and parabolic trough concentrating solar power (CSP) plants, generating electricity from concentrated light that would otherwise be wasted. A combination of conventional silicon and multi-junction concentrating PV (CPV...

Solar Heat in Industrial Processes Integration of Parabolic Trough Solar Collectors in Dairy Plants and Pharmaceutical Plants

Improvements in efficiency of solar parabolic trough

Solar energy is primary source of all type of energy which is present in nature i.e. all the energy derived from it. So, direct utilization of solar energy into useful energy is important. There are so many solar thermal equipments in which concentrating type collector heated the fluid up to 100 to 400C. It is employed for a variety of applications such as power generation, industrial steam gen...

The cost of balancing a parabolic trough concentrated solar power plant in the Spanish electricity spot markets

This study presents a new dispatch model (SCSP) for a CSP plant based on a dynamic programing algorithm. The purpose is to investigate the cost of balancing a CSP plant in the Spanish electricity market. Results are presented for a parabolic plant in the Spanish market for years 2009, 2010 and 2011 using solar availability data at the Plataforma Solar, Andalucia, Spain. The variation of balanci...

Geometric Optimization of Concentrating Solar Collectors using Monte Carlo Simulation

This paper presents an optimization algorithm for designing linear concentrating solar collectors using stochastic programming. A Monte Carlo technique is used to quantify the performance of the collector design in terms of an objective function, which is then minimized using a modified Kiefer-Wolfowitz algorithm that uses sample size and step size controls. This process is more efficient than ...