A preliminary design study of the viability of a megawatt-class power plant based on concentrated solar thermal energy by means of high concentration parabolic dishes and appropriate volumetric receivers (due to the fact that this provides high temperatures and modularity to be applied in the Moon's surface exploitation industry) is considered. This consists of standalone power plants operating under optional thermodynamic cycles including the closed Brayton cycle, Rankine cycle, and combined cycles operating with and without heat storage as source and heat sink energies. Since some tenuous atmospheric components are relatively abundant on the Moon's surface, such as argon and helium, and hydrogen obtained from electrolyzed water in the event that frozen water is available, taking advantage of the presence of these components as working fluids in thermal cycle-based energy conversion processes appears to be a viable task. The key idea deals with applying the afore-mentioned available working fluids to the appropriate thermodynamic cycles to achieve high efficiency power conversion under acceptable specific power. Furthermore, the possibility of taking advantage of the existence of high solar radiation flux (which allows high temperatures associated with low ambient temperatures), means that the main ingredients necessary to achieve acceptable thermal efficiencies without harmful emissions exist. A study of the thermal efficiency of the existing working fluids, pressure ratios and power ratios is performed. The results show that the proposed power plants are technically viable since most of the ingredients required are present in the Moon's tenuous atmosphere and on its surface. (c) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.