Mitigating project risk by use of high performance collector technology

Collectors with a high optical quality are generally valued for their additional performance, i.e. the expected additional output due to the performance gain compared to a lower quality reference collector. However, high-performance collectors additionally have a lower sensitivity to additional optical errors and, thus not only perform better nominally, but are also more likely to reach their nominal performance even when project uncertainties (e.g. increased sun-shape) or quality issues (e.g. increased component optical error) degrade their performance. This has physical reasons, whose cause and effect will be described and quantified within this paper.