Optical power concentrations on aligned and misaligned receivers in solar gridiron power systems

A powerful strategy, the ROSA approach, has been developed for calculation of optical power concentrations produced by solar collectors. The ROSA method is yery general and can be applied to concentrators and receivers of any geometrical shape. In addition, the method can be used for light from a source of finite extent undergoing any number of multiple reflections on the collector mirror. The work presented here is applied to optical concentrations on a conical receiver suspended in a spherical segment collector as appropriate for a Solar Gridiron Power System. Optical power concentrations on both aligned and misaligned receivers are described for various solar inclinations. A simplified approach for calculating azimuthally averaged power concentrations on a perfectly aligned receiver is also presented.