Solar tower on an uneven terrain: methodology and case study

Naman Agarwal, Manish Raj and Jishnu Bhattacharya

Renewable Energy, 2020, vol. 161, issue C, 543-558

Abstract: We develop a tool to estimate the potentiality of heliostat-field based central solar tower technology in an uneven terrain. SolarPILOT is a recently developed tool to design such heliostat field layout. Even though, individual heliostat elevation, where available, can be incorporated in obtaining the shading and blocking from immediate neighbours, the layout optimization in SolarPILOT assumes a flat field. The tool presented in this work supplements this shortcoming of SolarPILOT and extends its range of applicability in heliostat field design particularly on a hilly terrain. The developed tool is applied to two case-studies on real terrains, at real locations. By computing the shading and blocking profile, the annual up-time for individual heliostat is estimated. For the chosen terrains, 10%–30% heliostats remain ineffective more than 50% of the time due to shading or blocking, hence, can be eliminated to minimize cost. If such ineffective heliostats are removed from the installation on an uneven terrain, a significant cost-reduction is achieved at the expense of low reduction in heat collection potential of the field, lowering the LCOE by higher than a factor of two. The current study is an attempt towards development of a universal design-tool for heliostat fields.

Keywords: Solar tower; Heliostat field; SolarPILOT; Uneven terrain; Shading; Blocking (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960148120311897
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:renene:v:161:y:2020:i:c:p:543-558

DOI: 10.1016/j.renene.2020.07.113

Access Statistics for this article

Renewable Energy is currently edited by Soteris A. Kalogirou and Paul Christodoulides

More articles in Renewable Energy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().