Spanish engineering company Abengoa Solar has come up with a system for measuring solar plant parabolic trough collector performance.

The system was developed in collaboration with the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in the United States. It employs a set of advanced optical instruments that can measure the geometrical and optical properties of collectors in different ways, both at the factory and when they have been installed in the solar power plant.

The company has been using this system since early 2009 to monitor the quality of the parabolic trough collectors installed at the 50 MW Solnova 1, Solnova 3 and Solnova 4 plants outside Seville. 
 

The launch comes at a stage when research continues to help reduce collector optical losses, as well as to further reduce receiver heat loss at elevated temperatures.

Read more: Abengoa, parabolic trough collector