HELIOSTAT CHARACTERIZATION USING STARLIGHT

摘要

The present invention offers an improvement to existing canting, slope error, and/or pointing measurement approaches, by using one or more cameras to observe the reflections of points of light in the firmament, such as the reflections of stars and/or planets as visible within the night sky in the heliostat facets. An illustrative heliostat measurement system comprises a plurality of heliostats, and at least one camera that observes at least one heliostat. The heliostats reflect an image of the firmament that can be observed by the at least one camera. The system further comprises (i) at least one captured image of the firmament reflected from at least one of the heliostats; and (ii) a computer comprising programming that determines a heliostat imperfection from the captured image, wherein the heliostat imperfection is selected from at least one of a slope error, a canting error, and a pointing error.