Solar Thermal

About Solar Thermal

For generating power from solar thermal system, radiation from the Sun is concentrated to get high temperature (~200-1000 C). This high temperature is used to generate electricity. Here our APP shows the solar thermal power generation estimated at different locations of India based on the Parabolic Trough Collector technology. The simulation is carried out for 1 MW installed Capacity as a unit for Solar thermal Power plant. In our APP, initially, the user taps on the chosen location over a google map. Then the APP provide the details of Latitude, Longitude, name of the location and energy potential month wise in the form a table with numbers showing the energy values.


The target of the National Solar Mission is to build up India as a worldwide pioneer in solar energy generation. Solar power can be transmitted through grid either from solar photovoltaic or solar thermal technology. As compared to solar photovoltaic, solar thermal installations are less studied, especially regarding energy estimation and performance analysis. For estimating the potential of CSP plants, it is planned to simulate a power plant. We have marginally modified the design of 1 MW operational power plant installed at Gurgaon using Parabolic Trough Collector (PTC) technology. The results are compared with the expected output of Gurgaon power plant and also 50 MW power plant at Rajasthan. Our results have closely matched with a small deviation of 3.1% and 3.6% for Gurgaon and Rajasthan plants, respectively. Our developed model is also validated with 18 different solar power plants in different parts of the world by slightly modifying the parameters according to the plant capacity without changing major changes to the plant design. Difference between our results and the expected energy generation varied from 0.4% to 13.7% with an average deviation of 6.8%. As our results show less than 10% deviation as compared to the actual generation, an attempt has been made here to estimate the potential for the entire nation. For this modelling has been carried out for every grid station of 0.25° × 0.25° interval in India. Our results show that annual solar thermal power plant of 1 MWe capacity potential varies from 900 to 2700 MWh. We have also compared our results with previous studies and discussed. More details can be seen from

· DOI:

· 10.4236/jpee.2016.48002