Some details about the third rejuvenation of the 1000 kWth solar furnace in Odeillo: Extreme performance heliostats

Abstract

The PROMES-CNRS laboratory is operating the 1 MegaWatt Big Solar Furnace since 1968 in Font Romeu Odeillo. This facility allows to work on innovative processes to harness the solar energy (production of electricity and solar fuels, thermochemistry…) but also to study materials up to 3500°C on a surface up to 1 m wide, by collecting the solar energy thanks to 63 heliostats (2835m2 total surface of mirrors) and then concentrating it with a parabolic mirror with 9000 facets (1830 m2 aperture area) inside a tower which hosts the experimental setup and the control room [1][3][Fig. 1-2]. This facility has only one rival in the world, built by the USSR in Parkent, Uzbekistan, commissioned in 1987. The extensive capability of the CNRS solar furnace is due on one hand to its optics quality and on the other hand to the control system of the 63 heliostats field: the tracking performance including during cloudy or windy conditions, the flexibility of the available aiming strategies, all beyond performance of towers heliostats fields. After shortly presenting the past and current control systems, this paper presents the design and the commissioning of the third generation control system of the CNRS big solar furnace.