In two regions suitable for the developing solar thermal power stations in western China, numerical simulation with system advisor model (SAM) software and Greenius software is made on a typical 50MW parabolic trough solar thermal power plant. The calculation is carried out mainly on heat storage duration, gross power output per month, annual gross power out, annual utilization hours, photoelectric efficiency, etc. The numerical results indicates that the results of two softwares show similar results and the difference of the results may be caused by the heating field thermal output model and the steam turbine model.

solar thermal power generation, system advisor model software, Greenius software, numerical simulation