Design of heliostat field based on ray tracing

In the tower solar thermal power generation system, the optical efficiency of mirror field is the primary factor that determines the power generation efficiency of the whole system. Given the size and installation height of heliostat, in order to meet the requirements of rated Power 60MW, the parameters of heliostat field are designed and the model of tower solar thermal power generation system is established. Considering the cosine loss, shadow occlusion loss and truncation efficiency, and knowing that these three points are closely related to the position of the Sun, a method of ray tracing is proposed to calculate the sunshine accurately, the optimum parameters of helioscope field were determined by simulation. The simulation results show that the average thermal power output per unit mirror area can be increased by reducing the shadow occlusion between the heliostats.