The purpose of this work is to evaluate the energy coming to the focus of a solar parabolic concentrator SPC using four types of absorbers: flat plate, disk, water calorimeter (WC) and solar heat exchanger (SHE), developed in the Research and Technologies Centre of Energy in Borj Cedria in Tunisia (CRTEn). The temperature of the absorber, the solar energy absorbed by the receiver, the mean concentration ratio and both energy and exergy efficiency of the system were obtained experimentally. In order to validate the experimental results of the SHE and to determine the SPC efficiency using the disk, an analytical study based on thermodynamics analysis is carried out. We note that a good agreement between the four experimental methods has been obtained with the four receivers used in this work. The thermal energy efficiency varies from 40% to 77%, the concentrating system reaches an average exergy efficiency of 50% and a concentration factor around 178. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.