Optical characterization of a fixed mirror solar concentrator prototype by the ray-tracing procedure

The Fixed Mirror Solar Concentrator (FMSC) is a solar concentrator with static reflector and moving receiver whose design emerged in the seventies as an effort to reduce electricity production costs in solar thermal power plants. Solar concentrators based on this geometry were constructed in the seventies and eighties. A review of these prototypes is presented, highlighting the lack in research probably brought about by halting these projects, and the two main flaws of this research: poor theoretical analysis of the FMSC geometry and the unfortunate choice of the zero-width mirror limit hypothesis. In this paper, another methodology is presented to evaluate the FMSC geometry behavior: the construction of a FMSC prototype using lightweight materials with finite-width mirrors (nine mirrors) and an optical characterization by 3D ray-tracing tools. The results show good concordance between simulated and experimental data, showing that FMSC prototypes can be characterized optically by accurate ray-tracing tools. (C) 2014 AIP Publishing LLC.