The Impact of the Solar Irradiation, Collector and the Receiver to the Receiver Losses in Parabolic Dish System

Abstract

Parabolic Dish (PD) is one of Concentrating Solar Power (CSP) technologies that convert sunlight to electricity. PD has shown the highest efficiency by converting nearly 31.25% of solar radiation into electricity and PD has emerged as one of reliable and efficient Renewable Energy (RE) technology. However, the evaluation for the PD system performance by using experimental approach is costly and time consuming. Therefore, a model has become necessary to predict the system performance under several of operating conditions. Nevertheless, current literature on PD modelling is scattered, focusing on individual components and rarely organised in one cohesive report. This paper is to study on the impact of the Direct Solar Irradiance (DNI), collector and receiver to the value of heat transfer to the receiver; solar power intercept by a receiver as well as the receiver loses in 25kW PD system. This study is using a simulation approach and Matlab Simulink was used as the simulation tool. The irradiation data were downloaded from the Meteonorm 7 Software and George Town, Penang in Malaysia has been selected as the location for simulation. Meanwhile, the aluminium and silver was used as the reflective material and the intercepted factor used for the simulation is in the range of 0.9 to 1.0. As a conclussion, the simulation result has shown that variations of the solar irradiation on the site, reflective material and the intercept factors influence the value of the value of the rate of heat transfer to the receiver; solar power intercept by a receiver as well as the receiver loses.