Design of Self-powered Heliostat in Concentrating Solar Tower Power Plant

This paper proposed a small size heliostat that was self-powered and realized zenith-azimuth sun-tracking intelligently. It implemented the real-time and efficient track of the sun with the low-power microcontroller, and had wireless communication between the microcontroller and the central server based on wireless technology. The two-axis motors of heliostats achieved power-driving and sustainable operation with PV modules and rechargeable batteries. Moreover, the interval sun-tracking of the heliostat was optimized to guarantee the system operating in the low-power state. Through theoretical analysis and simulation, self-powered and intelligent-tracking properties of the maximum area heliostat with a mirror of3 m2 were validated.