Solar Field Inital Temp.- Empirical Model

How can I determine the Solar Initial Temp. in the Empirical Model of Parabolic Through? Or why the default value in SAM is 100 °C? I'm modeling a Solar Plant with Therminol VP-1 as HTF

Dear Fernando,

The empirical trough model's solar field initial temperature is the temperature at midnight on January 1. The model uses previous hour temperatures to calculate current hour temperatures, so needs an input value for the very first hour of the simulation.

The default value is just a starting point, you can change the value to something else. For example, you could run a simulation to see what the calculated temperature is for January 2, and then set the initial temperature to a value closer to that one.

Best regards,
Paul.