A non-imaging focusing heliostat for effective use of thermal solar energy is proposed. The heliostat consists of a number of grouped slave mirrors, which are able to move according to a proposed formula to eliminate the first order aberration. The master mirror tracks the sun by a proposed rotation-elevation mode to project solar rays together with the rest of slave mirrors into a fixed target. The merit of this design is that it may benefit the use of solar energy in high temperature applications by allowing a single stage collector to replace a conventional double stage structure; it may also benefit high concentration applications, e.g., solar powered Stirling engines, solar pumped lasers, etc. The feasibility and a reliability test of the proposed method by a prototype heliostat in the University of Technology, Malaysia is reported.
