ANSYS
Case Studies
NEM Energy's Innovative Solar Energy System: A Case Study
Overview
NEM Energy's Innovative Solar Energy System: A Case StudyANSYS |
Sensors - Optical Sensors Sensors - Utility Meters | |
Electrical Grids Renewable Energy | |
Product Research & Development | |
Smart Lighting Structural Health Monitoring | |
System Integration | |
Operational Impact
The use of ANSYS® Mechanical™ and the engineering solutions implemented led to significant improvements in the performance and cost-efficiency of NEM Energy's heliostat designs. The simulation helped NEM to improve performance and reduce the cost of heliostat designs at a much faster pace than could be accomplished solely by building and testing prototypes. The output from the APDL command snippets was exported to a ray tracing routine that determined the effect of structural deformation on the light reaching the receiver. These results were then used to calculate the potential amount of electricity that could be generated by each heliostat design, thereby optimizing the efficiency of the CSP system. | |
Quantitative Benefit
Shell elements save computational time and can export rotation angles. | |
Automatic contact creation reduces the amount of time compared to manually creating contacts. | |
Plastic deformation calculations ensure that the permanent deformation is small enough to not affect the accuracy of linear analysis for structural predictions. | |