Clean, Cost Effective, Solar Power

Our technology samples the on-target radiant footprint of each heliostat in multiple locations across the receiver and returns these samples to each mirror as retro-reflected light beams. With this multi-point information, each heliostat can optimise its alignment.

By the working principle of retroreflectors, this happens simultaneously for all heliostats, independently of each other. Unlike in competing closed-loop schemes, there is no communication overhead because the pertinent information is naturally directed to where it is needed.

Heliostats can be assigned specific regions on the receiver to illuminate. This capability can be used to adjust the power density on the receiver, for example to maintain a constant power density by illuminating a smaller region at times of lower solar flux in the morning and evening, and a larger region around noon-time. The feedback scheme can have reaction times down to seconds, allowing dynamic steering of heliostats, for example to avoid birds that inadvertently fly across the heliostat field, and re-acquire the target immediately after.

Closed-loop feedback allows for a much lighter, and thus less expensive construction of heliostats because any pointing errors due to flexing under environmental influences are immediately corrected by the feedback loop.