Patent ID: 8192027

Claim:
A suntracking system for a solar power plant with a receiver, comprising: a heliostat field comprising three or more heliostats; a plurality of cameras directed toward the three or more heliostats, wherein the plurality of cameras comprises a first camera and a second camera, each camera configured to capture an image of at least one of the three or more heliostats; a calibration controller configured to concurrently: acquire one or more orientation angles of a first heliostat for which reflected sunlight from the first heliostat is detected by the first camera; acquire one or more orientation angles of a second heliostat for which reflected sunlight from the second heliostat is detected by the first camera; and acquire one or more orientation angles of a third heliostat for which reflected sunlight from the third heliostat is detected by the second camera; and an estimation controller configured to estimate at least one geometric parameter for each of the three or more heliostats based on the one or more orientation angles and at least one nominal geometric parameter of the respective heliostat, wherein the system is configured to determine whether heliostats of the three or more heliostats are permitted to concurrently reflect or excluded from concurrently reflecting sunlight to be detected by a given camera of the first and second cameras based on proximities of the heliostats in an image plane of the given camera.