Dual-tower CSP plants: optical assessment and optimization with a novel cone-tracing model

Solar tower systems show significant prospects based on their room for improvement in the solar thermal industry. Despite not being an entirely new concept, multi-tower systems have not been extensively studied in the literature yet. An optical optimization model is presented to evaluate the feasibility of dual-tower systems, where each heliostat can select the most convenient receiver. There is a number of optimization variables, which makes it essential to implement a fast optical algorithm capable of evaluating the field optical efficiency. Taking advantage of the tower central receiver's axial symmetry, an integration method is proposed to work out the individual spillage for each heliostat. As a result, an optimal design has been accomplished where 32 representative days (with several time-points each) have been taken into account to assess the yearly-averaged optical efficiency of the whole solar field. Thus, it can be concluded that a ∽1.5% increase in the annual optical efficiency can be achieved with respect to the analogous single tower system.The two primary authors would like to express their gratitude to Juan Antonio Serrano Aguilera for being an inspiring example of imaginative and creative thinking. Second author J.J. Serrano-Aguilera would like to acknowledge the support provided by Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades (Spain) by means of the postdoc position: Ref No. FJCI-2017-32403 (Juan de la Cierva-Formación Postdoc Grant), as well as to Junta de Andalucía for the funding for the HERTERSOL project (UMA18-FEDERJA-195). Most of the numerical simulations have been carried out in Picasso, a RES node located in the Bio-Innovation Building of the University of Málaga (UMA) at the TechPark of Andalusia (PTA)