Heliostat field design for tower solar thermal plants must jointly address solar geometry,optical losses,and layout optimization under engineering constraints.We develop an end-to-end workflow that(i)adopts a consiste...Heliostat field design for tower solar thermal plants must jointly address solar geometry,optical losses,and layout optimization under engineering constraints.We develop an end-to-end workflow that(i)adopts a consistent East–North–Up(ENU)convention for all plant-and sun-related vectors;(ii)integrates cosine efficiency,projection-based shading and blocking(SB),atmospheric transmittance,and an HFLCAL(heliostat field local calculation)truncation model into a single optical chain;and(iii)couples an Eliminate-Blocking(EB)layout prior with an improved“Cheetah”metaheuristic to search ring topology,mirror sizes,and heights while enforcing spacing,kinematics,and rated-power requirements.Projection-based SB is calibrated against Monte-Carlo ray tracing at representative sun positions,and the HFLCAL truncation model is used to quantify sensitivities to sunshape and error-budget parameters.In a three-phase study(fixed-size baseline,uniform sizing,heterogeneous sizing),the EB-guided optimizer improves annual per-area output relative to a radial baseline and reliably attains a 60 MW target.Under equal evaluation budgets,the proposed optimizer converges faster and with lower variance than GA-and PSO-based baselines,while respecting panel-level peak-flux limits through a smooth penalization of flux violations.The resulting layouts exhibit outward-increasing azimuthal spacing and ring-wise size sharing that are consistent with recent heliostat-field deployment experience.The framework is modular,auditable,and readily adaptable to alternative receivers,sites,and cost-aware objectives.展开更多
文摘Heliostat field design for tower solar thermal plants must jointly address solar geometry,optical losses,and layout optimization under engineering constraints.We develop an end-to-end workflow that(i)adopts a consistent East–North–Up(ENU)convention for all plant-and sun-related vectors;(ii)integrates cosine efficiency,projection-based shading and blocking(SB),atmospheric transmittance,and an HFLCAL(heliostat field local calculation)truncation model into a single optical chain;and(iii)couples an Eliminate-Blocking(EB)layout prior with an improved“Cheetah”metaheuristic to search ring topology,mirror sizes,and heights while enforcing spacing,kinematics,and rated-power requirements.Projection-based SB is calibrated against Monte-Carlo ray tracing at representative sun positions,and the HFLCAL truncation model is used to quantify sensitivities to sunshape and error-budget parameters.In a three-phase study(fixed-size baseline,uniform sizing,heterogeneous sizing),the EB-guided optimizer improves annual per-area output relative to a radial baseline and reliably attains a 60 MW target.Under equal evaluation budgets,the proposed optimizer converges faster and with lower variance than GA-and PSO-based baselines,while respecting panel-level peak-flux limits through a smooth penalization of flux violations.The resulting layouts exhibit outward-increasing azimuthal spacing and ring-wise size sharing that are consistent with recent heliostat-field deployment experience.The framework is modular,auditable,and readily adaptable to alternative receivers,sites,and cost-aware objectives.
