Small solar tower receiver hourly incident thermal power in PySAM

Hello,

I'm interested in getting the receiver hourly incident thermal power in PySAM since I'm working in my own receiver model. The solar field has heliostats on one side of the tower and a cavity receiver.

I tried with the TcsmoltenSalt module and the output variable q_dot_rec_inc (Receiver incident thermal power [MWt]), but I thinks this only works for large solar fields with external receiver, as mentioned  here .

I also tried the Tcsiscc module, but even though the receiver can be configured (receiver_type: External=0, Cavity=1), I think the cavity receiver is no longer supported after having a look at the C++ source code  since only the external receiver type is taken into account.

Any advice about how to get the receiver incident thermal power? No need for any other calculations, thanks.

Best,
Javier. 

Hi Javier,

This sounds like you would need to use SolarPILOT or SolTrace to model a flat-plate receiver in order to get the incident thermal power into the cavity receiver.

For more on those tools, see www.nrel.gov/csp/solarpilot.html .

Here are links to additional resources you might need:

GUI: www.nrel.gov/csp/solarpilot-download.html

LK script: github.com/NREL/lk/blob/develop/doc/lk_guide.pdf

CoPylot (Python API): github.com/NREL/SolarPILOT/wiki/build-copilot-windows

Best regards,
Paul.

Hi Paul,

Thanks for the info and links. CoPylot sounds great for Python integration. Are there any plans to release CoPylot compilation steps for Linux?

In the meantime, I will try to compile it following the Window instructions, since the compilation is based on CMake, it should be achivable.

Best regards,
Javier.

Hi Javier,

I think these may be the build instructions for Linux:

github.com/NREL/SolarPILOT/wiki/Build-Linux

Best regards,
Paul.