Evaluation of flux density measurement method for concentrated solar irradiance

In order to estimate its measurement error range when indirectly measuring the flux distribution on receivers of solar thermal power systems, a new method is studied. The error sources of this method are analyzed based on the theoretical equation. An experiment to measure the flux density distribution of a concentrated beam is implemented with a spherical heliostat, a CCD camera, a diffuse reflector, neutral density filters and other devices. The flux density distribution and total energy of the concentrated solar irradiance on the reflector is calculated with a MATLAB program. The incident angle of rays on the center of the heliostat is measured with a total station. The theoretical value of the beam energy is calculated according to area and reflectivity of the heliostat, the direct normal irradiance and cosine efficiency. By comparing the theoretical value of the beam energy with the measured total energy, the relative error of the total energy and the flux density measured by this method is obtained. The measured relative error is 3.5%.This error is within permission, which further verifies the correctness and feasibility of this new method.