Simulation of Parabolic Trough Power Plants

New fed-in laws in Spain and World Bank funding promise good opportunities for the construction of new solar thermal power plants. Here, one of the most challenging tasks represent the determination of an economically optimised project site and plant design. Such multidimensional problems can only be solved by means of specific simulation software tools, like the new simulation environment “greenius”. In the following, the modelling approach for a parabolic trough plant applied within the greenius software will be explained. It will become obvious on the sample simulation runs that the variation of the solar irradiance given by different sources for a specific site has a high influence on the expected operation results of new power plants.