Use of concave heliostats in beam-down solar systems

The beam-down (BD) solar plant is standing out as an interesting alternative to conventional solar tower system. The main reason is that the receiver can be located at ground level. In the present work we present an analysis of the optical performances of a BD system when flat or concave heliostats are considered. A series of simulations, performed using a numerical code developed in our Laboratory, demonstrates the effectiveness of the concave heliostats with respect to the flat ones in reducing the size of the spot produced at the receiver aperture.

@InProceedings{LPD12,
  author       = {Leonardi, E. and Pisani, L. and D'Aguanno, B.},
  title        = {Use of concave heliostats in beam-down solar systems},
  booktitle    = {International Symposium of SolarPaces2012},
  year         = {2012},
  keywords     = {solar tower, beam-down, concave heliostats},
  url          = {https://publications.crs4.it/pubdocs/2012/LPD12},
}