Optical approach to design a beam-down heliostats plant

The optical design development of beam-down heliostat fields is complex and timewasting. It requires the use of an optical design software package in order to evaluate the interactions between light and surfaces and the solar divergence effects. This paper proposes a three-step procedure devoted to design a beam-down heliostat field taking into account the actual technical constraints; in particular, the shaping of the field starts from the request to have a sufficient uniformity irradiance on the internal surfaces of the receiver. The procedure is applied to an effective field simulation in order to allow a better understanding of its different phases.