Open Access

ARTICLE

EB-Guided Optimization of Heliostat Fields with Validated ProjectionLosses and HFLCAL Sensitivity

Zichang Meng, Na Chen, Qi Li, Qingyi Liu, Hongfei Jiang^*
School of Information and Communication, Guilin University of Electronic Technology, Guilin, 541004, China
* Corresponding Author: Hongfei Jiang. Email: rsjhf@guet.edu.cn

Energy Engineering https://doi.org/10.32604/ee.2025.072848

Received 04 September 2025; Accepted 19 December 2025; Published online 20 January 2026

Abstract

Heliostat field design for tower solar thermal plants must jointly address solar geometry, optical losses,and layout optimization under engineering constraints. We develop an end-to-end workflow that (i) adopts a consistentEast–North–Up (ENU) convention for all plant- and sun-related vectors; (ii) integrates cosine efficiency, projectionbased shading and blocking (SB), atmospheric transmittance, and an HFLCAL (heliostat field local calculation)truncation model into a single optical chain; and (iii) couples an Eliminate-Blocking (EB) layout prior with an improved“Cheetah” metaheuristic to search ring topology, mirror sizes, and heights while enforcing spacing, kinematics, andrated-power requirements. Projection-based SB is calibrated against Monte-Carlo ray tracing at representative sunpositions, and the HFLCAL truncation model is used to quantify sensitivities to sunshape and error-budget parameters.In a three-phase study (fixed-size baseline, uniform sizing, heterogeneous sizing), the EB-guided optimizer improvesannual per-area output relative to a radial baseline and reliably attains a 60 MW target. Under equal evaluationbudgets, the proposed optimizer converges faster and with lower variance than GA- and PSO-based baselines,while respecting panel-level peak-flux limits through a smooth penalization of flux violations. The resulting layoutsexhibit outward-increasing azimuthal spacing and ring-wise size sharing that are consistent with recent heliostat-fielddeployment experience. The framework is modular, auditable, and readily adaptable to alternative receivers, sites, andcost-aware objectives.

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Keywords

Heliostat field; shading and blocking; HFLCAL truncation; eliminate-blocking layout; metaheuristics;solar tower; sensitivity analysis

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