Development of a New High Dynamic Range Technique for Solar Flux Analysis Using Double-CCD Optical Camera

Mohamed Adel, Adrian Peña-Lapuente, Mohamed Rady, Alaa Hamdy

Abstract


In solar central receiver (SCR) systems, camera-based tracking and control strategies have been widely developed and tested. The camera, usually with a single CCD, captures images of the sun reflected by thousands of heliostats on the central receiver. The captured images are then analysed to allow the evaluation of solar flux. For accurate analysis process, the camera must have a high dynamic range (HDR) to give real and accurate information about the captured scene. In the present article, a new methodology has been developed using a double-CCD optical camera for improvement of dynamic range of the captured solar flux image. An experimental calibration set-up is adopted for accurate estimation of the camera response function. The double-CCD camera is used for acquiring two images at the same instant with two different levels of exposure. The two captured images are then merged into a single HDR image using a new proposed weighting function.  The enhanced optical performance of the proposed weighting function has been demonstrated by comparison with the previous HDR image generation weighting functions at different levels of illumination. Investigation of the capability of the proposed methodology for the analysis of beam accuracy and optical quality of SCR systems show that the present proposed method leads to more accurate solar flux analysis because of the improvement in the resolution of details of the final merged image.

Keywords


High Dynamic Range Image; Weighting Function; Optical Quality; Beam Accuracy

Full Text:

PDF

References


A. Pfahl, J. Coventry, M. Röger, F. Wolfertstetter, J. F. Vásquez-Arango, F. Gross, M. Arjomandi, P. Schwarzbözl, M. Geiger, and P. Liedke, “Progress in heliostat development†, Solar Energy, vol. 152, pp. 3-37, August 2017.

M. Berenguel, F. R. Rubio, A. Valverde, P. J. Lara, M. R. Arahal, E. F. Camacho, and M. López, “An artificial vision-based control system for automatic heliostat positioning offset correction in a central receiver solar power plant†, Solar Energy, vol. 76, no. 5, pp. 563-575, January 2004.

M. Röger, P. Herrmann, S. Ulmer, M. Ebert, C. Prahl, and F. Göhring, “Techniques to Measure Solar Flux Density Distribution on Large-Scale Receiversâ€, Journal of Solar Energy Engineering, vol. 136, no. 3, p. 031013, May 2014.

A. Ibrahim, A. A. El-Sebaii, M. R. I. Ramadan, and S. M. ElBroullesy, “Estimation of solar irradiance on inclined surfaces facing south in Tanta, Egyptâ€, International Journal of Renewable Energy Research, vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 18-25, March 2011.

M. Demirtas, M. Yesilbudak, S. Sagiroglu and I. Colak, “Prediction of solar radiation using meteorological dataâ€, International Conference on Renewable Energy Research and Applications, ICRERA, Nagasaki, Japan, pp. 1-4, 11-14 November 2012.

M. Jazayeri, S. Uysal, and K. Jazayeri, “A case study on solar data collection and effects of the Sun’s position in the sky on solar panel output characterization in Northern Cyprusâ€, International Conference on Renewable Energy Research and Applications, ICRERA, Madrid, Spain, pp. 184-189, 20-23 October 2013.

R. Al-Hajj, A. Assi, and F. Batch, “An evolutionary computing approach for estimating global solar radiationâ€, International Conference on Renewable Energy Research and Applications, ICRERA, Birmingham, UK, pp. 285-290, 20-23 November 2016.

P. M. Gadhe, S. N. Sapali, and G. N. Kulkarni, “Experimental evaluation of the solar flux distribution on the flat receiver of a model heliostat systemâ€, International Journal of Renewable Energy Research, vol. 8, no. 2, pp. 878-887, June 2018.

A. Al-Ghasem, G. Tashtoush, and M. Aladeemy, “Experimental study of tracking 2-D compound parabolic concentrator(CPC) with flat plate absorberâ€, International Conference on Renewable Energy Research and Applications, ICRERA, Madrid, Spain, pp. 779-782, 20-23 October 2013.

W. Yaici, and E. Entchev, “Prediction of the performance of a solar thermal energy system using adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference systemâ€, International Conference on Renewable Energy Research and Applications, ICRERA, Milwaukee, USA, pp. 601-604, 19-22 October 2014.

E. M. Toygar, A. Yazar, T. Byram, M. Tustan, O. F. Kaya, O. Das, and H. Calmaz, “Design and development of solar flat mirror and heat storage Systemâ€, International Conference on Renewable Energy Research and Applications, ICRERA, Milwaukee, USA, pp. 821-827, 19-22 October 2014.

M. R. Rodríguez-Sánchez, C. Leray, A. Toutant, A. Ferriere, and G. Olalde, “Development of a new method to estimate the incident solar flux on central receivers from deteriorated heliostatsâ€, Renewable Energy, vol. 130, pp. 182-190, January 2019.

S. Mann, “Compositing multiple pictures of the same sceneâ€, 46th Annual IS&T Conference, Cambridge, Massachusetts, pp. 50-52, 9-14 May 1993.

B. S. Eastwood and E. C. Childs, “Image alignment for multiple camera high dynamic range microscopyâ€, IEEE Workshop on Applications of Computer Vision, Breckenridge, USA, pp. 225-232, 9-11 January 2012.

S. Mann and R. W. Picard, “On being ‘undigital’ with digital cameras: extending dynamic range by combining differently exposed pictures,†48th Annual IS&T Conference, Washington, USA, pp. 422-428, 1995.

B. Madden, “Extended intensity range imagingâ€, GRASP Laboratory, University of Pennsylvania, 1993.

K. Yamada, T. Nakano, and S. Yamamoto, “Effectiveness of video camera dynamic range expansion for lane mark detectionâ€, IEEE Conference on Intelligent Transportation Systems, Boston, Massachusetts, pp. 584-588, 9-12 November 1997.

K. Yamada, T. Nakano, S. Yamamoto, E. Akutsu, and I. Aoki, “Wide dynamic range vision sensor for vehiclesâ€, IEEE International Conference on Vehicle Navigation and Information Systems, pp. 405-408, 31 August-2 September 1994.

K. Moriwaki, “Adaptive exposure image input system for obtaining high-quality color informationâ€, Systems and Computers in Japan, vol. 25, no. 8, pp. 51-60, July 1994.

Z. Chen and G. Mu, “High-dynamic-range image acquisition and display by multi intensity imageryâ€, Journal of Imaging Science and Technology, vol. 39, no. 6, pp. 559-563, 1995.

P. Debevec and J. Malik, “Recovering High Dynamic Range Radiance Maps from Photographsâ€, 24th annual conference on Computer graphics and interactive techniques - SIGGRAPH ’97, Los Angeles, California, pp. 369-378, 3-8 August 1997.

M. A. Robertson, S. Borman, and R. L. Stevenson, “Estimation-theoretic approach to dynamic range enhancement using multiple exposuresâ€, Journal of Electronic Imaging, vol. 12, no. 2, pp. 219-228, April 2003.

G. C. Holst, CCD arrays, cameras, and displays, 2nd ed., Winter Park, FL JCD Publishing, Bellingham, Washington, USA, 1998.

P. Rodrigues and J. P. Barreto, “Single-image estimation of the camera response function in near-lightingâ€, IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, Boston, Massachusetts, pp. 1028-1036, 7-12 June 2015.

“JAI AD-081 GE CCD camera user manualâ€, 2013. [Online]. Available: https://www.jai.com/downloads/manual-ad-081ge. [Accessed: 4 May 2018].

S. Mann, “Comparametric equations with practical applications in quantigraphic image processingâ€, IEEE Transactions on Image Processing, vol. 9, no. 8, pp. 1389-1406, August 2000.

T. Mitsunaga and S. K. Nayar, “Radiometric self-calibrationâ€, IEEE Computer Society Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, Fort Collins, Colorado, pp. 374-380, June 1999.

S. De Neve, B. Goossens, H. Luong, and W. Philips, “An improved HDR image synthesis algorithmâ€, 16th IEEE International Conference on Image Processing, Cairo, Egypt, pp. 1545-1548, 2009.

E. Reinhard, W. Heidrich, P. Debevec, S. Pattanaik, G. Ward, and K. Myszkowski, High dynamic range imaging : acquisition, display, and image-based lighting, 2nd ed., Elsevier Science, Morgan Kaufmann, Amsterdam, 2010.

Y. Tsin, V. Ramesh, and T. Kanade, “Statistical calibration of CCD imaging processâ€, 8th IEEE International Conference on Computer Vision, Vancouver, B.C., Canada, pp. 480-487, 7-14 July 2001.

K. Kirk and H. J. Andersen, “Noise characterization of weighting schemes for combination of multiple exposuresâ€, British Machine Vision Conference, Edinburgh, UK, pp. 1129-1138, 2006.

B. Goossens, H. Luong, J. Aelterman, A. Pižurica, and W. Philips, “Realistic camera noise modeling with application to improved HDR synthesisâ€, EURASIP Journal on Advances in Signal Processing, vol. 2012, no. 1, pp. 1-28, December 2012.

M. Mokhtar, I. Rubalcaba, S. Meyers, and M. Chiesa, “Heliostat field efficiency test of beam-down CSP pilot plant: experimental resultsâ€, SolarPACES Conference, Perpignan, France, 21-24 September 2010.

M. Röger, P. Herrmann, M. Ebert, C. Prahl, S. Ulmer, and F. Göhring, “Flux density measurement on large scale receiversâ€, SolarPACES Conference, Granada, Spain, 20-23 September 2011.




DOI (PDF): https://doi.org/10.20508/ijrer.v9i2.9183.g7646

Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.


Online ISSN: 1309-0127

Publisher: Gazi University

IJRER is cited in SCOPUS, EBSCO, WEB of SCIENCE (Clarivate Analytics);

IJRER has been cited in Emerging Sources Citation Index from 2016 in web of science.

WEB of SCIENCE in 2025; 

h=35,

Average citation per item=6.59

Last three Years Impact Factor=(1947+1753+1586)/(146+201+78)=5286/425=12.43

Category Quartile:Q4