Hello,
First of all, please be aware that the land area is essentially an economic input for the financial model: SAM uses the value to calculate the total land cost on the Tower System Costs page when you specify a land cost in $/acre. The land area has no effect on the performance model.
The purpose of the Non-Solar Field Area input is to specify the cost of land required for the project in addition to the land required for the heliostat field. Typically, it would include the power block, O&M buildings, etc.
The area occupied by heliostats value is an internal value that depends on several parameters that are not available in the user interface, which is why we did not include an equation for the value in Help. The area occupied by heliostats represents the ground area occupied by the heliostats and does
not include space between the heliostats. It is also different from the Heliostat Area, which is the heliostat reflective area. The Solar Field Land Area Multiplier is intended to account for space between heliostats, and for any additional land surrounding the heliostats.
The
Optimization Wizard topic in Help
explains the optimization steps that SAM uses to calculate the field parameters.
Best regards,
Paul.
