@Article{ee.2025.072848,
AUTHOR = {Zichang Meng, Na Chen, Qi Li, Qingyi Liu, Hongfei Jiang},
TITLE = {EB-Guided Optimization of Heliostat Fields with Validated Projection Losses and HFLCAL Sensitivity},
JOURNAL = {Energy Engineering},
VOLUME = {123},
YEAR = {2026},
NUMBER = {4},
PAGES = {--},
URL = {http://www.techscience.com/energy/v123n4/66737},
ISSN = {1546-0118},
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 consistent East–North–Up (ENU) convention for all plant- and sun-related vectors; (ii) integrates cosine efficiency, projection-based 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, and rated-power requirements. Projection-based SB is calibrated against Monte-Carlo ray tracing at representative sun positions, 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 improves annual per-area output relative to a radial baseline and reliably attains a 60 MW target. Under equal evaluation budgets, 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 layouts exhibit outward-increasing azimuthal spacing and ring-wise size sharing that are consistent with recent heliostat-field deployment experience. The framework is modular, auditable, and readily adaptable to alternative receivers, sites, and cost-aware objectives.},
DOI = {10.32604/ee.2025.072848}
}