Design Of The Tracking Control System For Tower Solar Heliostats

With the determination of the goals of "carbon peaking and carbon neutrality",the significance of renewable energy is becoming increasingly more strong and solar power generation is one of the important methods to achieve the goals.Solar power generation can be divided into photovoltaic and concentrated solar power.Concentrated solar power is seen as the cleanest,low-carbon green energy considering that concentrated solar power generation systems are usually equipped with a large-scale,low-cost,high-security energy storage system.Concentrated solar power is divided into four mainstream technical forms,the tower solar power generation offers the advantages of large-scale,low heat loss,high concentrating ratio and high operation temperature.Hence,the tower solar power generation is seen as the most promising technology as well as the most suitable technique for the large-scale commercial power generation.In a tower solar power plant,the heliostat tracking control technology is a key technology directly affecting the power generation efficiency of the power plant.In this paper,a sun tracking control system for the heliostat experimental platform is studied and designed,the main research content is listed as follows:By studying the dynamic behaviors of the sun,a sun tracking algorithm was proposed according to astronomical formulas and mathematical algorithms.Using reflection and concentration principle and operation principle of the heliostat,tracking methods were analyzed.A tracking model of the heliostat was established according to the position of the sun and the optical theory.The proposed algorithm is used to simulate and analyze the altitude angle and azimuth angle of the sun on a certain day,and the height angle and azimuth angle of the heliostat at a certain position in the heliostat field.According to the principle of the heliostat tracking control system,of which the hardware architecture is proposed.STM32F407 microcontroller is used as the core of the control system,the hardware selection and circuit design and production of the main controller and the motor drive are completed.After analyzing the workflow of the heliostat,a complete logic control scheme is constructed to complete the design of tracking control software.At the same time,Vijeo-Designer is used to complete the software design of the upper monitor,monitoring the running status of the heliostat.A prototype of the heliostat tracking control system was develped,a prototype test platform was built.After comparing the experimental results and simulation results of the azimuth angle and height angle of the heliostat.which showed that the accuracy of the proposed system is between-0.2°to0.2°.And the system is stable and reliable.