ACADEMIA Letters
Parabolic Trough Solar Thermal Power Plant with Energy
Storage System
Md Ahsan Habib
Nowadays, the global warming and greenhouse gas effect are the most important dangers for
the Earth’s future. It is now well known that the ultimate solution is using renewable energy
resources to stop their adverse consequences on human life. The electricity generation using
clean, secure, reliable, and affordable renewable energy sources can assist countries to meet
their sustainable development goals. An integration of thermal power plants with renewable
energy such as wind and solar sources is going to be considered as a new strategy should be
applied in the upcoming years.
Solar power technology has seen great advances over the last 10 years. Both photovoltaic
(PV) and concentrating solar power (CSP) technologies now comprises feasible commercial
options for large scale power plants as well as for smaller electricity and heat generating de-
vices. PV energy is based on the direct generation of an electric current from a material
(typically a semiconductor) that exhibits the photovoltaic effect when exposed to sunlight.
On the other hand, the principle of CSP (also referred to as solar thermal power), is the use of
the heat generated by direct solar radiation concentrated onto a small area with the purpose of
generating electricity. There are four basics commercially available CSP technologies. Two of
them, parabolic trough, and Fresnel linear collectors, mainly concentrate direct sunlight onto
a line, whereas parabolic dish and solar tower technologies, concentrate light onto a point [1].
Without any serious degradation in efficiency solar parabolic trough collectors are effec-
tively utilized for high temperature (300 - 400° C). So, most of the construction projects of
solar thermal power plants are emphasized on this kind of collectors. The main components
of these type of power plants are (1) solar field (2) steam generator (3) Turbine (4) Condenser
(5) Generator and (6) fossil fuel (backup) system [2].
Academia Letters, April 2021
Corresponding Author: Md Ahsan Habib, mxhabib1@shockers.wichita.edu
Citation: Habib, M.A. (2021). Parabolic Trough Solar Thermal Power Plant with Energy Storage System.
Academia Letters, Article 731. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL731.
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©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0