Heliostat blocking and shadowing efficiency in the video-game era

Blocking and shadowing is one of the key effects in designing and evaluating a thermal central receiver solar tower plant. Therefore it is convenient to develop efficient algorithms to compute this effect. In this paper we explore the possibility of using very efficient clipping algorithms developed for the video game and imaging industry to compute the block and shadowing efficiency of a solar thermal plant layout. We propose an algorithm valid for arbitrary position, orientation and size of the heliostats. This algorithm turns out to be very accurate and fast. We show the feasibility of the use of this algorithm to the optimization of a solar plant by studying a couple of examples in detail.