Accelerated Aiming Strategy in Central Receiver Systems Using Integer Linear Programming

. Aiming strategies are used to distribute the heat flux on the receiver surface with the aim to maximize the mass flow of the heat transfer fluid in the receiver tubes while avoiding thermal overloading. The optimization problem is modeled as an integer program (IP) to provide deterministic solutions. To improve the runtime, several accelerations are investigated as the grouping of heliostats to reduce the size of the optimization problem. In a case study we show that an optimal solution can be found within seconds while maintaining high accuracy.