Resumen: Heliostat alignment evaluation is among the main issues in solar tower concentration plant operation and maintenance. This paper describes a novel method used to evaluate heliostat misalignment and its experimental verification. This method provides a different way of visualizing beam centroid pointing errors by generating the complete deviation curve for each axis. This, for example, would be useful for verifying a heliostat’s correct alignment by using a measurement performed out of the receiver target, using these traces to calculate its reflection’s expected location, given a known misalignment. This measurement could be performed during operation simply by including a reflective element in the heliostat and two detector arrays on the tower’s surface. This model has been tested for various types of misalignments of a heliostat at different hours, dates, and heliostat locations. The simulation results have been validated by using an experimental setup at a scale of 1:100. Idioma: Inglés DOI: 10.1364/OE.27.00A257 Año: 2019 Publicado en: OPTICS EXPRESS 27, 8 (2019), A257-A268 ISSN: 1094-4087 Factor impacto JCR: 3.669 (2019) Categ. JCR: OPTICS rank: 19 / 97 = 0.196 (2019) - Q1 - T1 Factor impacto SCIMAGO: 1.533 - Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics (Q1)