Optical characterization of nonimaging focusing heliostat

A novel nonimaging focusing heliostat consisted of many small movable element mirrors that can be dynamically maneuvered in a line-tilting manner has been proposed for the astigmatic correction in a wide range of incident angle from 0° to 70°. In this article, a comprehensive optical characterization of the new heliostat with total reflective area of 25 m2 and slant range of 25 m using ray-tracing method has been carried to analyze the performance including solar concentration ratio, ratio of aberrated-to-ideal image area, intercept efficiency and spillage loss. The optical characterization of the heliostat in the application of solar power tower system has embraced the cases of 1×1, 9×9, 11×11, 13×13, 15×15, 17×17 and 19×19 arrays of concave mirrors provided that the total reflective area remains the same. The simulated result has shown that the maximum solar concentration ratio at a high incident angle of 65° can be improved from 1.76 suns (single mirror) to 104.99 suns (9×9 mirrors), to 155.93 suns (11×11 mirrors), to 210.44 suns (13×13 mirrors), to 246.21 suns (15×15 mirrors), to 259.80 suns (17×17 mirrors) and to 264.73 suns (19×19 mirrors).