Funding Awarded to Seven Projects to Advance Heliostat Technology

GOLDEN, Colo. — Seven projects will share in $3.5 million in federal funding intended to advance research in solar heliostat technology.

A heliostat is a large mirror that turns over time to keep reflecting sunlight at a predetermined target. They are typically deployed as a key selection in concentrated solar power installations.

The new funding was made available through the Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory and Sandia National Laboratories, co-leads of the Heliostat Consortium, which supports research, development, validation, commercialization and deployment of these high-performance mirrors.

The projects from the seven awardees, all of which are from a request for proposals, will be implemented over the next one to three years. All are in some way focused on either lowering the cost of heliostats and heliostat technologies or creating new market opportunities for the heliostat industry.

Low-cost heliostats offer significant renewable energy potential. They enable 5 cents per kWh concentrating solar-thermal power with energy storage capacity of 12 or more hours, which would help to support a fully decarbonized electricity grid. 

The expansion of low-cost, quality-built heliostats will reduce emissions in greenhouse-gas-heavy industries by providing needed high-temperature thermal energy. 

“These projects address a broad range of needs in the heliostat and concentrating solar power community,” said Guangdong Zhu, executive director of the Heliostat Consortium and an NREL senior researcher, in a written statement. 

“They range from design and manufacturing, automation, wireless controls, and education and outreach that will create course materials for students, graduate students, and even people already working in the heliostat industry,” Zhu said.

The seven projects selected to collectively receive $3.5 million in funding are:

• SunRing: Advanced Manufacturing and Field Deployment: This project by Solar Dynamics LLC and partners will develop processes to maximize cost-competitiveness, performance, and reliability of Solar Dynamics’ existing SunRing heliostat design.

• HELIOCOMM: This components-and-controls project by the University of New Mexico will model a resilient wireless communication system based on the principles of integrated access and backhaul technology, entropy-based routing, dynamic spectrum management, and interference mitigation. 
• An Educational Program on Concentrating Solar Power: This project by Northeastern University will develop an educational program focused on concentrating solar power and heliostats for power generation and industrial processes. It will be developed during the two-year project and then become part of the Northeastern curriculum for undergraduate and graduate engineering students.

• Demonstration of a Heliostat Solar Field Wireless Control System: Solar Dynamics LLC, with partners Remcom and Vanteon Corporation, will carry out a project aimed at demonstrating the reliable operation of a wireless heliostat solar field control system using commercially available products and developing analytical tools to de-risk the large-scale deployment of the wireless technology to solar fields with tens of thousands of heliostats. In parallel, a wireless radio frequency computer simulation of the demonstration system will be developed. The overall project goal is to prove that the wireless technology is fully capable of replacing traditional wired networks with minimal compromises.

• Twisting Heliostats With Closed-Loop Tracking: This project will design, manufacture, and test a new type of heliostat and study its application for high-concentration CSP. The University of Arizona will integrate a DOE Small Innovative Projects in Solar-type reflector with a high-accuracy mount and tracking camera to demonstrate an accurately focused and centered image of the solar disc. 
• Digital Twin and Industry 4.0 in Support of Heliostat Technology Advancement: The Tietronix project aims to leverage technologies from the Fourth Industrial Revolution (Industry 4.0) to enhance the CSP industry and achieve the cost reduction experienced by other industries that have already adopted such advancements. This project will use a model-based systems engineering approach to improve the design, analysis, and verification of heliostats and overall solar fields.
• Robotic-Assisted Facet Installation: Sarcos Technology and Robotics Corp., in collaboration with Heliogen, will investigate the feasibility of a novel mobile robotic system capable of supporting the installation of mirror facets onto a heliostat. The primary goal of this proposed effort is to refine the understanding of the challenges related to mirror facet installation to analytically determine the feasibility to address this task robotically from the vantage point of both technical and business considerations.

“This is a broad, diversified set of awards that covers a large swath of topics,” said Mark Mehos, NREL principal researcher in the thermal energy systems group, in a written statement. 

“This collection of projects hits immediate short-term needs as well as long-term needs, including education of the future workforce in the industry,” Mehos added.

All of the projects are expected to be completed in the next 12 to 36 months. 

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