Optimum Height and Tilt Angle of the Solar Receiver for a 30kWe Solar Tower Power Plant for the Electricity Production in the Sahelian Zone

This work investigated the prediction of the optimum height and tilt angle of the solar receiver of a 30kWe solar tower power plant for the electricity production in the Sahelian zone. Initially, the solar field is sized to determine the total reflecting surface area of the mirrors and the number of heliostats. A PS10-like radially staggered heliostat field is used to design the heliostat layout in the field using a Matlab code. The concentrated solar flux at the input of the receiver was determined using Soltrace software by the Monte Carlo ray tracing (MCRT) method. The sizing results show that the total reflecting surface area is 350m[sup.2] for an optical efficiency of 76.4% and a reference DNI of 600W/m[sup.2]. The solar field layout indicates 175 heliostats of 2m[sup.2] surface area and 1.5m height each. The simulation results show that the optimum height and tilt angle of the solar receiver are 26m and 65°, respectively.