Optimization procedure for design of heliostat field layout of a 1MWe solar tower thermal power plant

A procedure for designing and optimizing heliostat field layout of solar tower thermal power plant is developed. The ray tracing is used for the calculation of the optical efficiency of field. The mathematical theory of the calculation is derived. The parametric search algorithm, which allows variation of the field parameters within a specified range, is used for the optimization of field. The field layout is made automatically according to the no-blocking loss condition and the heliostats are located at the positions where the annual incident cosine value is higher. In this way, the blocking and cosine losses are lowered. Because the optimization of the distance between fore-and-aft two rows of heliostat is avoided, the computer time is reduced effectively. Using this procedure the heliostat field of a 1MWe solar tower power plant was designed. Four modes of layout including North-South cornfield, North-South stagger, Radial cornfield and Radial stagger were experimented and optimized respectively. The comparison of the field efficiency for the four optimized results was made. It is concluded that the North-South cornfield layout is the optimal decision for the 1MWe solar tower power plant.