The main handicap of the concentrating solar power technology is still the higher cost compared with the conventional coal power plant. Heliostat arrays cause about 40% of the costs of central receiver power plants. The cost reduction of heliostats is of crucial importance to central receiver...

DAHAN, the pioneer 1MWe CRS (central receiver system) funded by Ministry of Sciences and Technology (MOST), which can be regarded as the milestone in solar thermal power development in China, is now under construction at the foot of The Great Wall nearby Beijing. The major objective of the...

Wind loads greatly affect the mechanical performance and tracking accuracy of heliostats. Therefore, the wind load must be accurately known to assure the operational reliability of heliostats. A simple wind load model was developed based on experiments on an actual heliostat rather than a wind...

The focus of the current study is the wind loads on a 10.5 m × 9.0 m heliostat with a column height of 6.4 m, located in Beijing, PR China. This paper presents selected results of wind tunnel measurements of wind pressures on the heliostat. Wind pressure distributions are presented for...

Large-area, glass-metal heliostats have collection areas in the range of 100 m2–200 m2. The heliostats of Solar Tower power station, with high accuracy requirements during performance, are located at open terrain or suburban terrain and they are sensitive to gust. Therefore, wind load and...