Evaluation and Characterization of the Influence of Solar Position Algorithm on the Performance of Parabolic Trough Solar System

Abstract

For the open loop control system based on the solar position algorithm (SPA), without sensor correction, the error of SPA will bring the tracking error directly to decrease the efficiency of the solar system. By comparing with SPA proposed by NREL, this paper first evaluates main SPAs with different accuracy and presents the error of SPA on tracking error. Based on the annual average efficiency of the solar trough system, this paper evaluates the impact of the tracking error caused by SPA on the solar trough system, and proposes that the average SPA calculation error can be applied to characterize the impact of SPA on the trough solar system. By making a comparison of solar trough system efficiency calculated with fixed annual average tracking error and normal constantly changing tracking error within a year, respectively, the evaluation results show that for most SPAs, the introduced error is less than 0.05%, and only a few empirical algorithms with large tracking errors introduce larger errors, but they are not suitable for the trough solar system. Therefore, the SPA evaluation method proposed in this paper is applicable to the solar trough system.