Concentrated Solar Power: Heliostat Field & Receiver

A concentrated solar power (CSP) tower plant does not convert sunlight to electricity directly the way a photovoltaic panel does — instead a field of individually-steered mirrors, or heliostats, each continuously reorients to reflect sunlight onto a single receiver mounted high on a central tower. The receiver heats a flowing molten-salt heat-transfer fluid to several hundred degrees; that heat is stored and later drawn down to boil water and spin a conventional steam turbine-generator, just like a fossil or nuclear plant's back end. This simulation models the actual heliostat tracking geometry (each mirror bisects the sun-to-receiver angle), the resulting cosine-efficiency losses across the field, and a simple thermal balance on the receiver so you can see the turbine's output respond in real time to sun angle, field size, irradiance and even a passing cloud.