Performance evaluation and simulation of a solar thermal power plant

This paper presents a Simulink^reg Model that has been developed for the performance evaluation and simulation of Solar Power Generating or Solar Thermal Power Plants in Puerto Rico with the Compound Parabolic Concentrator as the solar collector of choice. There are several costly and sophisticated commercial software programs that perform this task but, this tool is aimed at performing initial evaluations of the viability and technical feasibility of these types of systems in terms of outlet temperature from the collector field and power output produced. It takes into consideration local solar radiation data and atmospheric conditions, as well as collector data and other parameters that can be adjusted by the user.