A review of Concentrating Solar Power and their sun tracking systems

CSP technology utilizes focused sunlight. CSP plants generate electric power by using mirrors to concentrate (focus) the sun s energy and convert it into high-temperature heat. That heat is then channeled through a conventional generator. The plants consist of two parts: one that collects solar energy and converts it to heat, and another that converts the heat energy to electricity. Large installations such as solar thermal power plants include fields of heliostats. Usually, all the mirrors in such a field are controlled by a complex tracking system that the resulting reflection is pointing onto the receiver target. This paper reviews the most important studies on the basic components of central receiver solar thermal power plants including the heliostat field, the solar tracker and the methods of tracking system. After an overview of Concentrating Solar Power (CSP) technology, current status and applications of the solar trackers are mentioned. The last section contains recent subsequent improvement of such key components as heliostat, receiver and tracker.