Integrating Ray Tracing with Single-Objective Optimization in Heliostat Field Design

Abstract

Tower solar thermal power generation is a new type of low-carbon and environmentally friendly clean energy technology. Through continuous optimization of the optical efficiency of mirror field and other key technologies, the energy utilization efficiency and economic benefits of solar thermal power stations can be improved, and contribute to the sustainable development of clean energy. This paper establishes a geometric model based on the light tracing method to solve the daily average, average annual optical efficiency, thermal output power, and average optical efficiency of the heliostatic field. The cosine efficiency is the cosine of the incident light and the normal angle, which is the cosine of the incidence angle; the atmospheric transmission is only related to the distance between the mirror center and the collector center; the mirror reflection constant is 0.92. The shadow occlusion efficiency and the truncation efficiency of the collector are the difficulties in the process of calculating the optical efficiency: for the calculation of the shadow occlusion efficiency, the Monte Carlo light tracing method is adopted. Based on the energy density of the helioscope, the occlusion efficiency of the shadow can be expressed as the ratio between the amount of the outgoing light to the total generated amount; for the calculation of the collector truncation efficiency, it links the reflected light with the surface equation of the collector. According to the joint results, if there is a solution, it means that the reflected light can be reflected in the collector, and the collector truncation efficiency can represent the ratio of the number of lights reflected in the collector to the number of unblocked lights in all the reflected lines. Finally, the average annual optical efficiency and output power parameters are respectively: 0.6093, 0.7431, 0.9283, 0.9828, 35. 4430MW, 0.5642kW/m². Results for the remaining months are shown in the main text.