CSPsim is a Concentrating Solar Power simulation software. Its goal is to easily create a model of a CSP power plant with a suitable heliostat field. It then can calculate solar irradiation power on a central receiver located on a tower.

The program started as a CAD project at Israel Institute of Technology. The idea came to me during my work at SolarOr Ltd., as we needed a simple tool to assess the amount of power that reaches a receiver in CSP systems. Together with a friend of mine, Evgeny Bogoleb, we decided to create this kind of a program and to get points for it during our undergraduate studies at IIT :)

We used C programming language with some OpenGL and GLUT (The OpenGL Utility Toolkit). User interface was written in Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0. A vital part of this project is GPC (General Polygon Clipper) library designed and implemented in 1997 at the University of Manchester by Alan Murta. We also used a modified algorithm for No Blocking Heliostat Field Layout by F.M.F. Siala and M.E. Elayeb, from Center For Solar Energy Studies, Tripoli, Libya.

• - no-blocking, planar heliostat field generation
• - variable height central receiver tower
• - variable size of rectangular heliostat mirrors
• - works anywhere on earth with exact location coordinates
• - makes correction for site elevation above sea level
• - ability to work with a given field geometry
• - graphical interactive output
• - option to generate a text result file