Search

A single mirror heliostat with azimuth-elevation drive was installed in the 1MWe DAHAN solar tower power plant near Beijing. The heliostat mirror is a standard outer RP3 solar-trough mirror facet. The heliostat was configured for accurate measurement of tracking performance by using a single small flat reflector. Equivalently, most of the reflector surface was covered with newspapers glued to the glass, leaving only a circular mirror region of 4 cm in diameter at the mirror center. A white target and ground mounted camera were used to monitor the location of the reflected image and verify the Authors’ tracking error correction model. During the work, it was necessary to revise the general azimuth-elevation tracking angle formula and associated error correction model to consider the specific definitions of the error parameters. After this revision, the performance of this extended general tracking angle formula and tracking error correction model were verified during three days of continuous operation. This paper presents the tracking error correction procedure and the results of applying it to this example. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]