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The construction of solar thermal power plants with several
thousands of square meters of collector area requires quality control
measures for components, subsystems, and entire col-lector rows. The
main objective of quality control is to ensure high optical performance
for the whole solar field. Quality con-trol, assembly documentation and
performance measurements are required by investors. Based on previous
R&D work in col-lector development and prototype qualification with
photo-grammetry, an automatic measurement system has been de-veloped for
use in solar field series assembly.
A new, fast, highly accurate method of optically measuring the reflector
slope of parabolic troughs has been developed. It makes use of the
absorber tube reflection in the concentrator as seen from some distance,
and is therefore called the “absorber reflection method”. Sets of
absorber tube reflection images are taken with the concentrator at
different angles. The reflector slopes are determined with image
analysis algorithms and geometrical evaluation. EuroTrough measurements
were verified against a reference measurement using high-resolution
close-range photogrammetry. The new technique dramatically reduces the
required measurement time.
The techniques have successfully been transferred to heliostat
applications.
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