Optimized Design of Heliostat Field Based on Ray Tracing Method

In this study, we optimize the design of the tower power plant parameters by constructing a geometric model to explore the optimal power output scheme of the heliostat field under certain constraints. Firstly, given the dimensions, elevation, and location of the heliostat mirror, each parameter is basically a fixed value, construct a mathematical model considering the angle of rotation of the heliostat mirror, and use the ray tracing method and other methods to establish the shadowing occlusion efficiency, the cosine efficiency, etc., and using Python to Compute the annual average values for optical efficiency, thermal power output, and thermal power output per unit area in the heliostat field; then the unknown quantity as the independent variable to establish the objective function on the output thermal efficiency, and determine the mirror size, height and other constraint equations, using the whale algorithm to optimize the unknown quantity, in the population size N = 50, the number of iterations t = 200 for the optimization of the solution, and output the optimal solution: the absorption tower location coordinates are (0,0,80), the mirror, sized at 7.4m*6m, and mounted at a height of 5 meters, delivers an average thermal power output of 1.5846525 kW/m².