High temperature thermal energy storage was studied by a lab-scale cylindrical storage tank experiment. A heat exchanger of thermal energy storage is used for separating two fluids, storage medium, and heat transfer fluid (HTF). There are two types of pipe in the heat exchanger, a vertical straight pipe and a helical coiled pipe. The experimental results were validated with the created mathematical model of non-steady state heat exchanger. The highest storage efficiency is 0.631 at the HTF flow rate of 0.1 kg/s in a helical coiled pipe heat exchanger. The HTF and storage medium temperatures were measured for validating the model at various HTF flow rates. The agreement between model and experiment was presented with the error below 10%. This model is able to calculate the storage temperature of solar thermal power plants that performs in the liquid temperature range of selected HTF and storage medium. Crown Copyright (C) 2008 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.