• Journal of the Korean Solar Energy Society
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• v.31 no.3
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• pp.80-88
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• 2011

Heliostat in the tower type solar thermal power plant is a sun tracking mirror system to reflect the solar energy to the receiver and the optical performance of it affects to the efficiency of whole power plant most significantly. Thus a solid understanding of heliostat's energy concentration characteristics is the most important step in designing of the heliostat field and the whole power plant. The work presented here is the analysis of energy concentration characteristics of heliostat used in 200kW solar thermal power plant, where the receiver located at 43m high in tower has $2{\times}2$m rectangular shape. The heliostat reflective surface is formed by 4 of $1{\times}1$m flat plate mirror facet and the mirror facet is mounted on the spherical frame. The direct normal incident radiation models in vernal equinox, summer solstice, autumnal equinox and winter solstice are first derived from the actually measured data. Then the intercept ratio, heat flux distribution and total energy collected at the receiver for the heliostats located in the various places of the heliostat field are investigated. Finally the effect of mirror facet installation error on the optical performance of the heliostat is analyzed.