A bilinear model for the thermal behaviour of a point focusing solar collector

An important task when designing point focusing (paraboloidal) solar‐collectors is to model the thermal behaviour of their receivers by an approximate dynamic model in view of thermal loop automatization. In general, this is very difficult or impossible by studying the exact physical phenomena which occur in the receiver. However, approximations can be made and approximate models can always be derived. Using filtering and estimation theory these models can be identified to represent reality very well.