Energy Scheduling Method of the Heliostat Field in a Solar Tower Power System Based on Integer Programming

We propose an energy scheduling method of the heliostat field, based on integer programming, to meet the requirements of power generation and to save operation costs in a solar tower power plant. We adopt a greedy-PSO（particle swarm optimization) algorithm to solve the optimization problem. The simulation results show that the heliostat field can export a specified energy value in the case of DNI（direct normal insolation) change, which verifies the effectiveness of the proposed method. Furthermore, the method is applied to the control of a water-steam receiver and simulation results indicate that real-time energy demand can be satisfied with the proposed method.