Design of the Heliostat Field of the CSIRO Solar Tower

A close-packed heliostat field of more than $800m2$ reflector area has been installed by Solar Heat and Power for the CSIRO solar tower at the Energy Centre in Newcastle, Australia. The heliostat field has been designed with significantly greater field packing density than normally associated with heliostat fields. It can be shown that even though a heliostat field with a high ground coverage exhibits more blocking and shading, a higher annual performance can be achieved up to a certain point. The optimum ground coverage calculated for the CSIRO solar tower configuration is in the range of 53%. Other heliostat field designs usually have ground coverage below 30%. The annual optical performance of the CSIRO field per square meters of reflector is about 9% higher than a radial stagger field of 30% ground coverage for a research tower, which was optimized to have the highest performance for the time frame from 10 a.m. until 2 p.m.