A system for providing a contour map of the surface of a heliostat from reflected sunlight using a fly's eye camera. The system includes an entrance screen configured to receive sunlight reflected by said heliostat; an array of imaging apertures extending across the entrance screen, each aperture forming an image of said heliostat from a different viewpoint to provide a plurality of heliostat images; one or more digital cameras configured to view all of said plurality of heliostat images; an image processor configured to map out from the plurality of heliostat images a location of sunlight delivered to the entrance screen to obtain a plurality of maps, and to provide, based on centroids of said maps a tip and tilt of each said subsection The reflecting surface profile of the heliostat is obtained by integration of the subsection tilts across all the subsections.

Solar array (1) comprising solar modules (3) distributed in rows (10), each solar module comprising solar collector (5) carried by a single-axis solar tracker (4), a reference solar power plant (2) comprising a central reference solar module and at least one secondary reference solar module, and a piloting unit (7) adapted for: piloting the angular orientation of the central reference module according to a central reference orientation setpoint corresponding to an initial orientation setpoint, piloting the orientation of each secondary reference module according to a secondary reference orientation setpoint corresponding to the initial orientation setpoint shifted by a predefined offset angle; receiving an energy production value from each reference module; piloting the orientation of the modules, except for the reference modules, by applying the reference orientation setpoint associated to the reference module having the highest production value.

A solar energy heating system includes a first parabolic reflector and a second parabolic reflector. The first parabolic reflector reflects sunlight into the second parabolic reflector and the second parabolic reflector reflects substantially all of the sunlight through an opening in the first parabolic reflector. A heat transfer system transfers collected solar heat to one or more of a house, a building, a tent, a swimming pool, a steam generator, a radiant heater, a dwelling, a heat storage unit, a thermal battery, or a thermal electric generator.

One embodiment provides a method, including: receiving configuration input for a solar structure; the configuration input comprising (i) a geographical location, (ii) module configuration input, and (iii) reflector configuration input; identifying the position of the sun; determining an angle between the solar reflector and the solar module corresponding to a predetermined power gain for the solar module, wherein the determining comprises (i) identifying the corresponding area of the solar module that is illuminated by the solar reflector and (ii) totaling the contributions from each of the solar reflectors to calculate an irradiance for each solar cell; adjusting the angles of at least some of the solar reflectors with respect to the solar module to angles determined to correspond to the predetermined power gain using at least one actuator; and dynamically changing how the solar cells are electrically connected together to form a plurality of strings.

A method for controlling the orientation of a solar module including a single-axis solar tracker orientable about an axis of rotation, and a photovoltaic device supported by said tracker and having upper and lower photoactive faces, including: measurement of a distribution of the solar luminance called incident luminance originating from the incident solar radiation coming from the sky to reach the upper face, said distribution being established according to several elevation angles; measurement of a distribution of the solar luminance called reflected luminance originating from the albedo solar radiation corresponding to the reflection of the solar radiation on the ground to reach the lower face, said distribution being established according to several elevation angles; determination of an optimum orientation considering the measurements of said distributions of the incident and reflected solar luminance; servo-control of the orientation of the module on said optimum orientation.

The solar energy and solar farms are used to generate energy and reduce dependence on oil (or for environmental purposes). The maintenance, operation, optimization, and repairs in big farms become very difficult, expensive, and inefficient, using human technicians. Thus, here, we teach using the robots with various functions and components, in various settings, for various purposes, to improve operations in big (or hard-to-access) farms, to automate, save money, reduce human mistakes, increase efficiency, or scale the solutions to very large scales or areas, e.g., for repair, operation, calibration, testing, maintenance, adjustment, cleaning, improving the efficiency, and tracking the Sun.

The invention relates to an apparatus for concentrating cosmic radiation originating from a celestial object, said apparatus comprising: a concentrating optical surface able to reflect incident cosmic radiation toward a target surface OXY, and liable to contain local surface errors and aiming and orientation errors; a system for inspecting the reflective optical surface; means for acquiring images of the optical surface from various viewpoints M.sub.mn (X.sub.mn, y.sub.mn) that are located on the target surface, m varying from 1 to M and n varying from 1 to N, so as to obtain MN images of the optical surface illuminated by the cosmic radiation, with M viewpoints along X and N viewpoints along Y, where M>1, N>1 and M.Math.N30; and a unit for processing the M.Math.N acquired images, which unit is suitable for: calculating the slopes (P)/x and (P)/y for each point P(x,y) of the reflective optical surface, where: $\frac{\left(P\right)}{x}=g_X{\mathrm{.Math.}}_0\frac{\underset{m=1}{\overset{M}{.Math.}}\underset{n=1}{\overset{N}{.Math.}}\mathrm{sign}\left(x_{\mathrm{mn}}^{}\right)}{}$

The solar energy and solar farms are used to generate energy and reduce dependence on oil (or for environmental purposes). The maintenance, operation, optimization, and repairs in big farms become very difficult, expensive, and inefficient, using human technicians. Thus, here, we teach using the robots with various functions and components, in various settings, for various purposes, to improve operations in big (or hard-to-access) farms, to automate, save money, reduce human mistakes, increase efficiency, or scale the solutions to very large scales or areas, e.g., for repair, operation, calibration, testing, maintenance, adjustment, cleaning, improving the efficiency, and tracking the Sun.

A solar tracking device having: a primary optical sensor (30); at least two auxiliary optical sensors (70a, 70b); and a housing. The housing has an upper surface (80) with a central hole (100; 62; 82) below which the primary sensor (30) is disposed and light wells (22; 25), disposed laterally around the central hole (100; 62; 82), in which each of the respective auxiliary sensors (70a, 70b) is disposed. Each light well (22; 25) has a bottom surface (15) on which the associated auxiliary sensor (70a, 70b) is disposed, an aperture (84) in the upper surface, and sidewalls (22) connecting the upper surface and the bottom surface. One of the sidewalls (22) is a light-reflective surface (25) disposed parallel to a tangent of the central hole, all other sidewalls being light-absorbing.

Provided are a heliostat calibration, device and a heliostat calibration method that can suppress time-change-dependent control error increases and can reduce calibration frequency. The present invention is provided with: an initial position information acquisition unit that acquires initial position information for a heliostat; a theoretical value calculating unit that calculates from the heliostat initial position information and sun position information a theoretical value that is related to the orientation of the heliostat; a deviation calculation unit that, using as input an actual measured value for the orientation of the heliostat, calculates the deviation between the theoretical value and the actual measured value at least two times a day; and a coordinate calibration unit that, when the deviation exceeds a threshold value, calibrates the coordinates of the heliostat such that the deviation is at or below the threshold value.