Sandstorm erosion on solar reflectors: A field study on height and orientation dependence

F. Wiesinger, F. Sutter, A. Fernández-García, J. Wette and N. Hanrieder

Energy, 2021, vol. 217, issue C

Abstract: A large share of future solar energy plants is going to be located in desert environments where the involved aging effects of the installed components still exhibit a lack of knowledge. The acquired data within this project is considered of high interest for plant developers because for the first time representative samples were exposed at three heights above ground (1.2, 2.4 and 3.6 m) and varying orientations at a Moroccan site which is known to exhibit significant sandstorm activity for 12 months. Additionally, the present wind velocities and directions were measured. It could be concluded, that the strongest reflectance losses are detected on the samples which are orientated towards the directions from which the maximum wind velocities were measured, even though their frequency was three orders of magnitude smaller than the frequency of intermediate winds. Furthermore, an explicit height dependence of the erosion effects with increasing distance from the ground is demonstrated. Analysis of the horizontal inclination angles showed that the reflectors exposed at 90° experienced twice the damage that was measured at the reflectors exposed at 45°. This is in line with theoretical assumptions and results from laboratory experiments dealing with the dependence of erosion effects on the impact angle.

Keywords: Concentrating solar power plant; Photovoltaic plant; Solar reflector; Sandstorm; Erosion; Desert conditions (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360544220324580
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:energy:v:217:y:2021:i:c:s0360544220324580

DOI: 10.1016/j.energy.2020.119351

Access Statistics for this article

Energy is currently edited by Henrik Lund and Mark J. Kaiser

More articles in Energy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().