Effect of passing clouds on the dynamic performance of a CSP tower receiver with molten salt heat storage

The second part of the paper presents an in-house code developed to study the transient thermal performance of the receiver. The outcome of this second analysis confirms the results of the previous optical study: the selected optimum strategy leads to a 1% higher efficiency of the receiver. Also, the temperature distribution of the larger shadows is more harmful than when several smaller clouds pass over the solar field, both for the larger temperature gradients in the receiver and for the production of molten salts. This is also confirmed in the last part of the paper where different patterns of combined cloud passages are explored in regards to the charge/discharge process of the thermal energy storage system.