This paper aims at developing a novel air-cooled condenser for concentrated solar power plants. The condenser
offers two significant advantages over the existing state of the art. Firstly, it can be installed in a modular format
where pre-assembled condenser modules reduce installation costs. Secondly, instead of using large, fixed speed
fans, smaller speed controlled fans are incorporated into the individual modules. This facility allows the operating
point of the condenser to change in order to maximise plant efficiency at all times. Two condenser designs were
proposed and full-scale prototype modules were manufactured for experimental testing. Both designs comprise a
bank of circular finned tubes, coupled to an array of axial fans. The air-side thermal and aerodynamic characteristics
were measured using a purpose builtsteady-state test facility. The measurements were correlated and compared well
with existing correlations in the relevant literature, thus validating their use in thermodynamic models to predict
power plant performance. A plant performance analysis was conducted combing the experimental measurements
with output data from a 50MW concentrated solar power plant. This analysis firstly verified that the plant efficiency
can be continually maximised by altering the condenser fan speed. Furthermore, under certain conditions plant
output can be increased by over 10% by varying fan speed by 10% of the full speed. The study also provides a
comparison of the two designsin terms of their effect on the plant output power. With respect to the thermodynamic
efficiency and cost-efficiency, the four row condenser substantially outperforms the initial six row design.