Thermodynamic solar power station

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A thermodynamic solar power plant (or solar thermal power plant with concentration or heliothermodynamics), in English CSP (for ) is an industrial site that concentrates the Sun's rays using mirrors to heat a heat carrier fluid, which is generally used to produce electricity. This type of power plant allows, by storing this fluid in a reservoir, to extend the operation of the power plant several hours beyond sunset. Different types of power plants are distinguished according to the shape of the mirrors (flat or curved) and the distribution of the heat carrier fluid (punctual or linear).

The production of thermodynamic solar power plants reached 0.05% of the world's electricity production in 2020, less than that of solar photovoltaics. The main producing countries are Spain (36.4%), the United States (25.0%), China (12.3%), South Africa (10.4%), Morocco (8.2%) and Israel (4.7%).

Types and sectors
Several technologies have been implemented on an industrial scale. The turn power plant consists of a field of motorized solar sensors, the heliostates, which concentrate the rays of the Sun towards a fixed fireplace, located at the top of a tower, where there is a boiler. In cylindro-parabolic mirror power stations, these concentrate radiation on tubes filled with a heat carrier fluid. A close technology, Fresnel's mirrors, uses flat mirrors (or quasi-planes) rotating around a horizontal axis in order to follow the Sun's course and thus redirect and optimally concentrate the solar rays towards an absorber tube. In these two technologies, the heat carrier (oil or molten salts) circulating in the tube is thus brought to high temperature and sent to a steam generator. The steam then spins turbines that drive generators producing electricity. The parabolic, combining thermodynamic solar power and Stirling motor, achieves very high temperatures (more than ) and thus the highest efficiency of all solar technologies, 29% compared to the usual 15 to 20% of solar photovoltaic energy.

Other thermodynamic pathways are being explored to exploit solar radiation. A solution using air heated to more than one fluidized bed (e.g. silicon carbide) was proposed in the 2000s, designed to better withstand thermal fatigue; It is linked in particular to irregularities in the solar resource and poses a problem for conventional heat exchangers. A very hot air supply would replace the combustion chamber with the equivalent of a gas turbine with a solar energy concentrator. Autonomous parabola micro-centrals combined with a Stirling motor in the home (10 to 10), operating with hot sources more than , would allow decentralized production