Site selection for hillside central receiver solar thermal plants

A concise overview of heliostat fields-solar thermal collectors: Current state of art and future perspective

“…The suggested configuration, which is referred as the beam down arrangement, can reduce the filed total cost. Another possibility that can completely eliminate the need of a solar tower is proposed by Slocum et al and Noone et al in which the mirrors are positioned on a hillside. Moreover, multi‐tower and multi‐receiver arrangements can be employed to further advance the heliostat field thermal, optical, economic performances.…”

Performance investigation on solar thermal conversion of a conical cavity receiver employing a beam-down solar tower concentrator

“…A computational model of solar position, proposed by Duffie and Beckman (2006), was adopted in this work in order to derive instantaneous sun-tracking angles. The solar position relative to an observer on the ground is described as two angles namely the solar altitude c and azimuth u, where sufficiently accurate equations of aforementioned solar angles for the heliostat were presented by Noone et al (2011). Sun is an apparent moving object while the target is a fixed object, the heliostat frame has to be adjusted to follow the apparent change of the solar position.…”

Upscaling of an Innovative Cogeneration CSP System

“…In CSP systems, the surface area from which the heat losses occur, that is, the receiver aperture, is significantly less than the total surface area of the collectors. In the STEP-EW project, heliostats positioned on a south-facing hill reflect the light directly onto the receiver on the ground [5]. The solar receiver is the component that receives sunlight and converts it into heat.…”