IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/energy/v29y2004i5p701-713.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Heliostats for maximum ground coverage

Author

Listed:
  • Schramek, Philipp
  • Mills, David R.

Abstract

Most conventional heliostats consist of a rectangular reflector which is moved around a fixed vertical axis tracking the azimuth of the sun and a second moving horizontal axis which rotates around the vertical axis to allow tracking the elevation of the sun. The maximum ground coverage possible of fields of such heliostats without colliding neighbouring reflectors is 58%. Applications of a Multi Tower Solar Array (MTSA) may need heliostat fields with ground coverage over 90%. We propose a new type of heliostat which can be set up in fields with a ground coverage of up to 100%. The maximum possible ground coverage depends on the unimpeded space volume needed by the reflector of each heliostat. The shape and the orientation of this space volume depends on the orientation of the tracking axes and on the shape of the reflector. A horizontal orientation of the fixed axis allows higher ground coverage and heliostats with rectangular reflectors can be lined up in rows with the highest density. The row density increases the longer the reflector becomes relative to its width and approximates 100% maximum ground coverage for infinite long and slim heliostats. With specially shaped hexagonal reflectors, ground coverage up to 100% is possible.

Suggested Citation

  • Schramek, Philipp & Mills, David R., 2004. "Heliostats for maximum ground coverage," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 29(5), pages 701-713.
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:energy:v:29:y:2004:i:5:p:701-713
    DOI: 10.1016/S0360-5442(03)00178-6
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360544203001786
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/S0360-5442(03)00178-6?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Yerudkar, Aditi N. & Kumar, Durgesh & Dalvi, Vishwanath H. & Panse, Sudhir V. & Gaval, Vivek R. & Joshi, Jyeshtharaj B., 2024. "Economically feasible solutions in concentrating solar power technology specifically for heliostats – A review," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 189(PA).
    2. Yao, Yingxue & Hu, Yeguang & Gao, Shengdong & Yang, Gang & Du, Jinguang, 2014. "A multipurpose dual-axis solar tracker with two tracking strategies," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 72(C), pages 88-98.
    3. Georgios E. Arnaoutakis & Dimitris Al. Katsaprakakis, 2021. "Concentrating Solar Power Advances in Geometric Optics, Materials and System Integration," Energies, MDPI, vol. 14(19), pages 1-25, September.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:energy:v:29:y:2004:i:5:p:701-713. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.journals.elsevier.com/energy .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.