LINEAR FRESNEL COLLECTOR DEMONSTRATION ON THE PSA PART II – COMMISSIONING AND FIRST PERFORMNCE TESTS

Linear Fresnel collectors have the potential to reduce levelized electricity costs (LEC) of solar thermal power plants and thus accelerate sustainable market penetration of solar thermal power plants. So far no reliable information is available on the operation and performance characteristic of linear Fresnel collectors. To overcome this lack of information a German consortium was formed and led by MAN-Ferrostaal Power Industry with the Solar Power Group GmbH (SPG) aiming at the design, construction, operation and assessment of a linear Fresnel collector operated in direct steam generation mode. To test the collector prototype under real solar conditions, it is connected to the so called DISS test facility of the Plataforma Solar de Almeria (PSA). The DISS test facility is a parabolic trough collector loop used for the in depth investigation of the direct solar steam generation. The test set-up is designed in a way that the linear Fresnel collector can be fed with pre-heated water, a two-phase water-steam flow and a pure steam flow. The linear Fresnel test collector is used to investigate its performance characteristic under real solar conditions.