This part of IEC 62862 contains the main terms and definitions used by the solar thermal electric (STE) industry and intends to be a reference for users of industry documents. Since the components and configurations of STE plants depend on the concentrating solar thermal technology used (i.e.@ central receiver@ parabolic-trough collector@ parabolic-dish or linear Fresnel concentrator)@ some terms are not applicable to all types of STE plants and notes have been introduced in their definitions for clarification. The reference STE plant configuration assumed is composed of three main subsystems: solar field@ power block and (eventually) thermal storage system.