CSP power tower - receiver area not updated after optimization

Hi everyone,

I am trying to create a function representing the relation betweend receiver thermal power and receiver area in a CSP power tower system for different systems with different thermal power. I am confonted with the follwing problem: After using the SolarPILOT optimization algorithm, "receiver height" and "receiver diamater" get optimized and updated, but in "System Costs" the value for "Receiver area" stays constant with a value of 1197.86 m^2. Also for different systems with different themal power of the receiver, the value stays constant. However, the total receiver costs change after using the optimization algorithm. Is it an error that the "Receiver area" is not updated? Is there a way to calculate the receiver area?

Cheers and thanks already for the replys!
Felix

Hi Felix,

Thank you for reporting this issue. We are aware, and will fix it for the next version of SAM. For details, please see this Issue on the SAM GitHub repository: github.com/NREL/SAM/issues/631

Best regards,
Paul.

Hi Paul,

thanks for the fast reply! For now I have a workaround by calculating the receiver area backwards from the receiver capital costs.