Sensor-controlled heliostat with an equatorial mount

A heliostat having a photo-sensor sun-tracking system was developed and evaluated. The sensor was composed of a set of two photo-cells placed side by side on the bottom of the small box. Sun-tracking can be achieved by rotating the heliostat equipped with the sensor, while maintaining the two photo-cells under illumination by the sun through a slit in the box. A preliminary tracking evaluation of the sensor was carried out with the aid of a mirror-telescope system, and the tracking error was estimated to be less than 0.6 mrad in clear weather. The developed heliostat employed an equatorial mount system that permits the rotating speed of the right-ascension axis to be nearly constant for the diurnal motion of the sun. The use of two additional sensors, a cloud sensor and a primary sensor, permitted stable tracking with high accuracy even in a cloudy sky. Field tests of the heliostat revealed that an angular error within 2 mrad was achieved in fine weather. In cloudy weather, the heliostat operated stably with the cloud sensor within an error of 10 mrad. 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.