Is there a specific reason why the Field optical efficiency of a molten salt CSP power plant differs extremely from the efficiency of a Direct Steam Tower plant, including drops to zero in the middle of a day?
The molten salt tower model sets the field optical efficiency to zero when the tower is not delivering energy. SAM effectively turns off the tower when the DNI is below a certain minimum value. The direct steam model, on the other hand, reports the calculated optical efficiency, regardless of what the tower is doing.
Best regards,
Paul.
