High flux solar simulators for concentrated solar thermal research: A review

When the availability of solar radiation is not enough to develop experimental investigation in the field of concentrating solar energy, solar simulators are a widely employed solution. They represent a source of artificial light, which can be comparable with concentrated sunlight. Besides, they provide advantages such as better parametric control of the process under study. In this work, it is presented an extensive review of the high flux solar simulators that are available in the different solar energy research centers around the world. Many of them are similarly designed and have common elements. Others are based on different concepts and their particular features are also pointed out. The main applications of solar simulators reported in literature are discussed along the work and remarked then in a specific section.