3D performance analysis of a concentrating solar power plant based on a MATLAB model

This paper proposed a MATLAB based model of the primary loop of a Concentrating Solar Power plant (CSP). Among the available technologies for the CSP, the parabolic troughs with a binary mixture of salts as heat transfer fluid is considered here. The model accepts some input data related to the both the location (for example daily solar irradiance) and the layout of the solar field. Moreover, a Graphical User Interface (GUI) has been implemented with the aim to be used by everyone for any layout of CSP. The model is based on CSP with thermal storage, therefore the input and output temperatures have to be well-defined. The advantage of the CSP with thermal storage it the independence by environment conditions different from the forecasted ones.