High-Resolution Wind and Structural Loads Data measured on Parabolic Trough Solar Collectors at Nevada Solar One (NSO)
This data set characterizes the complex wind conditions and resulting structural loads on full-scale, operational parabolic trough collectors. Over two years, NREL conducted comprehensive field measurements of the atmospheric turbulent wind conditions and the resulting structural wind loads on the parabolic troughs at the Nevada Solar One plant. The measurement set-up included meteorological masts and structural load sensors on four trough rows. Additionally, we commissioned a lidar, scanning the horizontal plane over the trough field.
Wind loading is a main contributor to structural design costs of Concentrating Solar Power (CSP) collectors, such as heliostats and parabolic troughs. These structures must resist the mechanical forces generated by turbulent wind. At the same time, the reflector surfaces must exhibit the necessary rigidity to maintain their optimal optical performance in windy conditions. Studying wind-driven loads at a full-scale, fully operational CSP plant will provide insights into the wind impact on the solar collector fields, which currently is beyond the capabilities of wind tunnel tests or state-of-the-art simulations.
By providing this first-of-its-kind data set to the CSP community, we aim to enhance the community's understanding of wind-loading experienced by CSP collector structures. The data set might be used, for example, to verify simulations or for comparisons to wind tunnel tests.
The directory structure is:
NSO/
{}/ data set type: inflow_mast_1min, inflow_mast_20Hz, wake_masts_1min, wake_masts_20Hz, loads_1min, loads_20Hz, or lidar
year={}/ year
month={}/ month
day={}/ day
The structure of the filenames is:
Type_YYYY-MM-DD_00h_to_YYYY-MM-DD_00h.parquet
YYYY-MM-DD: date of the daily file that contains data from 00:00 UTC to 24:00 UTC (lidar data contain one scan shorter than a day, so the lidar file name also contains hour and minute)
Type: Inflow_mast_20Hz, Inflow_mast_1min, Wake_masts_20Hz, Wake_masts_1min, Loads_20Hz, Loads_1min, or Lidar
Examples:
NSO/inflow_mast_20Hz/year=2022/month=02/day=03/Inflow_Mast_20Hz_2022-02-03_00h_to_2022-02-03_23h.parquet
NSO/lidar/year=2023/month=04/day=02/Lidar_2023-04-02_19-00-17_to_2023-04-02_19-00-17.parquet
Data are stored in the Parquet file format. The variables and units in each dataset are listed in [1].
Example Python scripts to read the data are provided at the OEDI data lake.
[1] Egerer, U., Dana, S., Jager, D. et al. Wind and structural loads data measured on parabolic trough solar collectors at an operational power plant. Sci Data 11, 98 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-023-02896-4