Mirrors and Reflectors

All current parabolic trough power plants use glass mirror panels manufactured by Flabeg. The mirrors are second, surface-silvered glass mirrors (which means that the reflective silver layer is on the backside of the glass). The glass is a 4-milimeter-thick, special low iron or white glass with a high transmittance.

The mirrors have a solar, weighted specular reflectivity of about 93.5%. A special multilayer paint coating protects the silver on the back of the mirror. And each mirror panel is approximately 2 square meters in area.

The LS-3 collector features 224 mirror panels on each solar collector assembly. The 80-MWe SEGS IX power plant has 888 LS-3 solar collector assemblies and almost 200,000 mirror panels.

The glass mirror panels have performed very well during the operation of the SEGS (solar electric generating system) power plants. They’ve maintained high reflectivity and suffer low annual breakage rates. However, mirror breakage does occur and replacements have been relatively expensive. A number of alternative mirror concepts have been under development to reduce cost, improve reliability, or increase performance.

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