Research on the Position Optimization of Tower Solar Heliostat Field Based on Optical Efficiency

Abstract

Tower solar thermal power generation technology has multiple advantages such as high efficiency, environmental protection, rich resources, and economic feasibility, which is an important part of clean energy development. However, the power efficiency of tower solar thermal power generation system has obvious fluctuation and instability due to the arrangement mode, the size of each mirror and the distance between them. In the heliostat field, if all the heliostats have the same size and installation height, how to determine the location of the absorption tower and the location and size of the heliostat to maximize the annual average heat output per unit mirror area is a problem to be solved. The Campo layout is first used to generate the dense heliostat field as the initial mirror field before optimization. The optimized arrangement of the Campo layout is obtained by changing the distance between the heliostat and the central absorption tower and the distance between the heliostat and the adjacent heliostat. Secondly, the position coordinates of the initial absorber and the size of the heliostat were taken as decision variables. Taking the actual situation and the comprehensive efficiency of the heliostat field as the basic constraints, the constraint of the number of the heliostat is further analyzed. The optimization model was established by taking the formula of annual average thermal power output per unit mirror area as the objective function. In the Campo layout, the adaptive gravitational search algorithm is used to solve the experiment, and finally the relevant parameters under the optimization arrangement are obtained, which maximizes the annual average thermal power output per unit mirror area when the helostat field reaches its rated power.