Accurate determination of the amount of incoming solar radiation at Earth’s surface is important for both climate studies and solar power applications. Satellite-based datasets of solar radiation offer wide spatial and temporal coverage, but careful validation of their quality is a necessary prerequisite for reliable utilization. Here we study the retrieval quality of one polar-orbiting satelli...

banded ultra-violet solar radiation, the high-rise solar tower to updraft the heated air to the atmosphere, and in between the power conversion unit, where a system of coupled turbines and generators transforms the stream of heated air into electric power. A good efficiency of the power plant can only be reached with extra-large dimensions of the tower and/or the collector area. The paper prese...

Recently, there has been a growing interest in the production of electricity from renewable energy sources (RES). The RES investment is characterized by uncertainty, which is long-term, costly, depend on feed-in-tariff and support schemes. In this paper, we address the real option valuation (ROV) of a solar power plant investment. The real option framework is investigated. This framework consid...

Over the last few years, many European countries experienced a rapid growth of photovoltaic (PV) power plants. For example, more than 20,000 new PV power plants were built in the Czech Republic. The high spatial and temporal variability of the solar resource and subsequent PV power plant production, poses new challenges for the reliability and predictability of the power grid system. In this pa...

In this paper, transverse and longitudinal vibration of nonlinear plate under exciting of orbiting mass is considered based on first-order shear deformation theory. The nonlinear governing equation of motion are discretized by the finite element method in combination with Newmark’s time integration scheme under von Karman strain-displacement assumptions. For validation of method and formulation...

A detailed performance model of the 30 MWe SEGS VI parabolic trough plant was created in the TRNSYS simulation environment using the Solar Thermal Electric Component model library. Both solar and power cycle performance were modeled, but natural gas-fired hybrid operation was not. Good agreement between model predictions and plant measurements was found, with errors usually less than 10%, and t...