Solar concentrating collectors are special types of thermal collectors that convert the solar radiation energy to the internal energy of the heat transfer fluid (such as water, oil, or air) in the collectors. You might find these chapters and articles relevant to this topic. G. Kiss, in Metropolitan Sustainability, 2012
Linear concentrating solar power (CSP) collectors capture the sun's energy with large mirrors that reflect and focus the sunlight onto a linear receiver tube. The receiver contains a fluid that is heated by the sunlight and then used to heat a traditional power cycle that spins a turbine that drives a generator to produce electricity.
All concentrating solar power (CSP) technologies use a mirror configuration to concentrate the sun’s light energy onto a receiver and convert it into heat. The heat can then be used to create steam to drive a turbine to produce electrical power or used as industrial process heat.
It could be noted through the literature that concentrating collector systems could have a storage component that enables the solar collector to use the absorbed heat by the concentrator at night time and increases the performance, namely thermal and electrical efficiencies as well as plant's production rate.
This ability to store solar energy makes concentrating solar power a flexible and dispatchable source of renewable electricity, like other thermal power plants, but without fossil fuel, as CSP uses the heat of highly concentrated sunlight.
Concentrated solar power (CSP) is a promising technology to generate electricity from solar energy. Thermal energy storage (TES) is a crucial element in CSP plants for storing surplus heat from the solar field and utilizing it when needed.