Solar energy is highly beneficial in addressing fossil fuel consumption and global warming concerns. But it comes with its own set of drawbacks as harnessing and releasing it is sporadic and expensive. Its output also depends on the amount of sunlight at any given time of the day and the cloud cover. Considering all the issues underlined above, Concentrating Solar Power (CSP) systems work best to trap the sun’s heat and drive steam turbines to generate utility scale power. In CSP, thousands of mirrors track the sun’s heat and collect it in a receiver. A heat transfer fluid then is then pumped through the receiver to collect the heat. The heated fluid is used to boil water, drive a steam turbine and generate energy. (more…)