Heliostat field ERROR Molten Salt Tower IPH

Hi Paul,

When trying to either generate or optimise my heliostat field for my model of a solar power tower, industrial process heat case in the latest version of SAM, I get this error:

Could not evaluate callback function:btn_optimize->on_change
[61]:failed to evaluate function call argument number 2, value = plant_spec_cost
[19]: eval error in statement lis
t[19]: error inside function call

How can I fix this? Thank you for your time.

I have attached the case file. 

Kind regards,

Harry

Hi Harry,

This looks like a bug in SAM 2023.12.17.

Please see this GitHub issue to track our progress fixing it: github.com/NREL/SAM/issues/1672

Best regards,
Paul.

Hi Paul,

Thank you for addressing the issue and starting a fix.

Roughly how long do these fixes tend to take i.e. days or weeks?

Just trying to work out whether its worth moving onto a standard CSP model and just adjusting some inputs.

Kind regards

Harry

Hi Harry,

We are working on an update to SAM 2023.12.17 that we expect to release in mid-February.

These kinds of bugs generally take weeks or months for us to fix and then release an update.

Best regards,
Paul.

Hi Paul,

Thank you! 

Just thought I would let you know that I was able to work around this by generating a layout in SolarPILOT and exporting it to SAM. The annual simulations seem to then work.

I do seem to be having a slight issue with SolarPILOT however, where, when I run a full annual simulation to generate a heliostat field, the green progress bar goes to completion and the entire 8760 hours seem to have run, but the programme freezes anjd crashes each time before any sort of layout appears. I have deleted and reinstalled the software to no avail. I'm not sure if you cover SolarPILOT in these forums?

Thanks,

Harry

Hi Harry,

We don't provide support for SolarPILOT on this forum. You can send an email using the "Contact information" link on the SolarPILOT website: www.nrel.gov/csp/solarpilot.html

I'm not sure work on SolarPILOT is currently being funded -- it looks like the last code commit was June 2023: github.com/NREL/SolarPILOT/issues

I'll ask around and see if I can get more information and report back here if I learn more.

Best regards,
Paul.