Concentrated solar power technologies
Thermodynamic solar plants

The solar flux intercepted by the Earth's disk, treated as a blackbody, is approximately 1,350 W/m² outside the atmosphere (solar constant). Solar radiation is attenuated as it passes through the atmosphere, due to absorption and scattering. The solar flux incident on the Earth's surface in desert regions is approximately 1,000 W/m².

Concentrating solar radiation allows the absorber's temperature to be raised by several hundred degrees compared to the equilibrium temperature achieved without concentration. Assuming that the solar receiver behaves ideally as a blackbody and exchanges energy with the outside environment solely through radiation, the efficiency of the solar receiver heated to temperature T _rec is expressed in terms...