Ray Tracing Method for the Evaluation of Yearly Performance of a Solar Thermal Concentrator

A method for evaluating the yearly performance of a solar concentrator is presented. The simulation is achieved using the commercial forward ray-tracing tool Tracepro in conjunction with MATLAB. Ray tracing methods are often used to assess the performance of solar concentrators; however, most works on this area simplify the simulation process by considering only a handful of representative scenarios along the year, for example, summer and winter solstices for tracking studies or monthly average days for evaluating the annual average output of the system. The present method is able to achieve a year-long simulation on an hourly basis using MATLAB to setup each simulation within Tracepro via the Dynamic Data Exchange (DDE) protocol; for increased fidelity hourly irradiance data from Meteonorm is also taken into account. The simulation results showed that the proposed method is able to provide valuable data that can be used as input for broader studies, for example, annual dynamic simulations that consider site-specific energy demands.