Hi Harry,
SAM's industrial process heat (IPH) models use a simple fixed charge rate (FCR) method to calculate the "levelized cost of heat" (LCOH). That method represents the capital cost as one number in either $ or $/kW of system capacity. For IPH systems, the system capacity is the "target receiver thermal power" value shown on the System Design page.
Unlike the concentrating solar power (CSP) models, there is not a way to represent the cost of the solar field independently of the system capacity.
The solar field area is an input, so it is not reported in the results. You can use the solar multiple to vary the solar field area as a function of the heat sink power, and then adjust the capital cost to account for the solar field cost.
To do that with parametrics, you could use the Enter costs in $ option on the Financial Parameters page, and on the Parametrics page, create a table with solar multiple and fixed capital cost as the input variables, and manually enter values for the cost for each solar multiple value. You may have to do some testing on System Design and Solar Field input pages to compare the actual solar multiple and solar field area with the target solar multiple.
Best regards,
Paul.
