Abstract
Heliostat, as a mirror system tracking the sun's movement, is the most important subsystem determining the efficiency of solar thermal power plant. Thus the accurate sun tracking performance under the various hazardous operating condition, is required. This study presents a methodology of development of the solar ray tracing technique and the application of it in the analysis of sun tracking error due to the heliostat geometrical errors. The geometrical errors considered here are the azimuth axis tilting error and the elevation axis tilting error. We first analyze the geometry of solar ray reflected from the heliostat. Then the point on the receiver, where the solar ray reflected from the heliostat is landed, is computed and compared with the original intended point, which represents the sun tracking error. The result obtained shows that the effect of geometrical error on the sun tracking performance is varying with time(season) and the heliostat location. It also shows that the heliostat located near the solar tower has larger sun tracking error than that of the heliostat located farther.