Patent Document ID: 9575480
Application ID: 14137739
Patent Flag: 1

Claim One:
1. A system comprising: a solar thermal receiver having a plurality of panels; a plurality of heliostats configured to reflect flux from the Sun toward the solar thermal receiver; and a processor having an addressable memory, the processor configured to: receive a linear function comprising input parameters of maximizing an amount of heat absorbed by the solar thermal receiver; receive constraints comprising: a calculated total energy that a heliostat can contribute to the solar thermal receiver, a total amount of flux the solar thermal receiver can absorb, and the total amount of flux a panel of the solar thermal receiver can absorb; determine all of a full space of optimal solutions to the received linear function based on the input parameters and the constraints, wherein the full space of optimal solutions has a convex shape on a hyper-plane; select a point from in the full space of optimal solutions as a return variable, wherein small perturbations to the amount of heat absorbed by the solar thermal receiver produces small changes to the return variable; and select a desired set of tracking heliostats that satisfies the received linear function.