Cutting Edge Technology for Solar Field Automation

During the late 80s and early 90s, Concentrating Solar Power (CSP) technologies started to be developed in places such as the Southwest of the US or Southern Spain. After those initial investments, more than a decade passed without major projects being developed anywhere in the world. But in the early stages of the 21^st century, Spain’s generous feed-in tariff revolutionized the solar landscape at a very fast pace. This would not have been possible without the appropriate solar field control and positioning technologies, which ensure that the solar field is continuously operating in both a reliable and safe mode. Solar field solutions have continued to evolve during the last years to increase plant performance while reducing the overall project cost, which has become key to ensure the future development of solar projects. The solutions used during the early stages of the CSP era differ from the ones currently being deployed in several aspects. Both hardware and software developments have contributed to the success of standard, proven and well-supported solutions that ensure autonomous and continuous sun tracking. Different, project-specific requirements in different areas of the world have also ensured innovation continues to thrive and guarantee a bright future for solar field automation development. This paper describes some of these developments and their impacts to the improvement of solar field control.