Heliostat filed

Hello,

I was wondering if there is a way to get the exact location of each heliostat in the field rather than having the number of them in each zone. We need to calculate the coordinates of each heliostat.

Many thanks

Yes. SAM's power tower models allow you to specify the heliostat field with a set of coordinantes instead of relying on the optimization wizard to calculate an optimized layout for you.
See the Helistat Field topic in Help for instructions (from the Help menu, or press F1 in Windows / command-? in OS X), under "Specifying the Field":
SAM Help - Tower Heliostat Field
Best regards,

Paul.

Thank you Paul.

But, as a part of a reserach project field layout has been optimized by SAM, we need to get the coordinates of the optimized heliostat field.
Is there a way to do that?

Kind regards,
Mehdi

Dear Mehdi,

SAM's power tower optimization wizard only works for a circular field with the heliostat distribution described as a number of heliostats per zone (each zone is a section of a ring or annulus around the tower from the foot of the tower to the outer edge of the field). SAM models each zone as a single mirror surface area. It does not generate a table of x-y coordinates for each heliostat in the field, so it is not possible to export such a table.

However, you can export the table of numbers of heliostats per zone by clicking the "Export" button at the bottom of the Heliostat Field page.

Best regards,
Paul.

Dear Paul,

Thank you for your reply and clarification about the method of modelling each zone in SAM.

I was aware that we cannot get x and y coordinates from SAM. When I checked the DELSOL optimization results, I noticed that for each zone it provides radial and azimuthal separation. So, I was wondering if we could get the radial distance (distance from the tower) and an angle for each heliostat so that we could calculate the coordinates using them.

Do you think it is possible to that?

Kind regards,
Mehdi

Dear Mehdi,

SAM does not calculate the position of each heliostat in a zone. It only calculates the position of each zone, and models the heliostats in that zone as a single mirror.

If you assume that the heliostats in each zone are evenly distributed, and knowing the number of heliostats in the zone and the zone's radial coordinates, I suppose you could calculate a position for each heliostat, but you would have to do that outside of SAM.

Best regards,
Paul.