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Mirrors that can turn and tilt, called heliostats, are used to concentrate sunlight onto a target, the thermal heat receiver, at the top of a tower. Heliostats move with the sun throughout the day in order to have the best angle to reflect and concentrate the sunlight onto the receiver and can have a curved shape. The more heliostats there are and the more area they take up results in a larger amount of solar energy concentrated onto the receiver.The arrangement of heliostats may vary between crescent shaped or radial arrays depending on how many receivers there are on a tower and where they are located.<ref>Arvizu, Dan. "Concentrating Solar Power". National Renewable Energy Laboratory. June 12, 2010 [http://web.archive.org/web/20160502171536/http://www.nrel.gov:80/learning/re_csp.html]</ref> | Mirrors that can turn and tilt, called heliostats, are used to concentrate sunlight onto a target, the thermal heat receiver, at the top of a tower. Heliostats move with the sun throughout the day in order to have the best angle to reflect and concentrate the sunlight onto the receiver and can have a curved shape. The more heliostats there are and the more area they take up results in a larger amount of solar energy concentrated onto the receiver.The arrangement of heliostats may vary between crescent shaped or radial arrays depending on how many receivers there are on a tower and where they are located.<ref>Arvizu, Dan. "Concentrating Solar Power". National Renewable Energy Laboratory. June 12, 2010 [http://web.archive.org/web/20160502171536/http://www.nrel.gov:80/learning/re_csp.html]</ref> | ||
[[Molten salt]] can be used to store thermal energy collected by a solar tower or solar trough, in order to generate electricity in bad weather or at night. This is successfully used in semi-commercial solar power plants, e.g. in Spain{{expand}} but are still in early stages of commercialization. | |||
==== Solar dish engines ==== | ==== Solar dish engines ==== |