SOLAR THERMAL POWER PLANTS OPERATING ON PARABOLIC TROUGHS MIRRORS

Abstract

Among the renewable energies, the Sun represents the most abundant, inexhaustible and clean primary energy source of our planet, which can partly solve in the future, the worldwide energy supply. Sunlight has, at the terrestrial surface, low and variable intensity, largely depending on geographical latitude, seasons, weather and time of day, so that, with the view of obtaining high parameters of solar heat, useable in the power plants operation, concentrating and heat storage equipments are needed. Under these circumstances, after reviewing the solar radiation properties and its availability at the ground level, the paper put into evidence the current design of parabolic trough collectors, as the most proven solar technology used in thermal power plants, able to achieve temperatures around 400°C, required for the thermodynamic cycle development. To date, solar power plants capacities have recorded at global level low values, placed at almost 5 GWe, especially due to the excessively costs needed by the solar field technologies, but promising achievements are expected in the near future, by increasing investmens in this area.

Keywords

• solar energy
• parabolic trough mirrors
• solar thermal power plants