Cavity-shaped receivers are new alternative heat collection elements for parabolic trough collectors that aim to reduce longwave thermal radiation. This study proposes a novel truncated elliptic receiver with front transparent and back opaque insulation for competitive performance without a vacuum. A novel analytical model, coupled with a ray tracing tool, is introduced to assess and maximize the performance of a standard-scale collector by varying the cavity’s depth, width, truncation fraction, and eccentricity, as well as the tube’s diameter ratio and eccentricity. The results show that the optical efficiency is driving the overall collector’s performance and the ellipse’s aspect ratio and truncation fraction should be set to around 1.5 and 0.42, respectively. The maximum energy and exergy efficiencies are 81.59 and 33.17 % for optical and thermal efficiencies of 90.90 and 89.76 %, respectively. These efficiencies are achieved when the cavity’s half-depth, half-height, truncated fraction, and eccentricity are 55.89 mm, 37.06 mm, 0.395, and 1.0, with tube eccentricity and diameter ratio of 0.16 and 1.063, respectively. The PTC’s energy and exergy efficiencies decrease by increasing the depth of the cavity and the two eccentricities and increase by increasing the truncated fraction and the tube diameter. The two efficiencies increase by 1.69 and 2.54 % when increasing the irradiance level and by 7.40 and 5.65 %, respectively, as the flow rate increases. As the ambient temperature increases, the energy efficiency enhances by 0.7 %, whereas the exergy efficiency degrades by 10.74 %. In contrast, the energy efficiency decreases by 11.59 %, and the exergy efficiency increases by 52.1 % as the inlet fluid temperature increases from 150 to 350 °C.