Optimization of multiple receivers solar power tower systems

Abstract

In this article a new procedure to optimize the design of a Multiple Receivers Solar Power Tower system is presented. The proposed procedure allows to optimize the different receivers (height, aperture tilt angle, azimuth angle and aperture size) as well as the heliostat field layout, seeking to minimize the levelized cost of thermal energy. The optimization problem is high dimensional, with a black-box nonconvex objective function that is hard to compute. Our method is based on an alternating greedy-based heuristic method, already used by the authors to design a system with a single receiver, which simultaneously optimizes the receivers and the heliostat field. The proposed procedure allows one to determine the overall number of heliostats, their locations and the aiming region of each field.