Session: 08-14-03: Emerging Technologies in Solar Energy

Paper Number: 100268

100268 - Call for Partnership: A Newly Formed Heliostat Consortium (Heliocon) to Advance Heliostat Technologies for Concentrating Solar Power 

Heliostat-based concentrating solar-thermal power (CSP) systems are a Generation 3 technology[1] with immense potential to provide low-cost, dispatchable renewable thermal and electrical energy to help achieve 100% decarbonized energy infrastructure in the United States. In 2021, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Solar Energy Technologies Office (SETO) launched the Heliostat Consortium (HelioCon), a five-year initiative to advance heliostat technologies. The HelioCon mission is threefold: (1) establish strategic core testing and modeling capabilities and infrastructure at national labs; (2) support heliostat technology development in relevant industries; and (3) serve as a central place to integrate industry, academia, and other stakeholders for heliostat technology research, development, validation, and deployment.

Shortening the project development cycle is key to attracting investors to heliostat-based CSP systems. As such, HelioCon’s first step was to conduct a thorough roadmapping study to identify technical and nontechnical gaps that have slowed the development of low-cost, high-performance heliostat technologies with minimized annual operation and maintenance (O&M) expenses. Gaps are defined as the difference between the current state-of-the-art technologies and a future scenario where heliostat-based CSP systems are fully competitive and ready to occupy a substantial market share in the decarbonized energy infrastructure, including electricity, industrial process heat, and solar fuel.

This report summarizes the findings of the Heliocon roadmapping study. The consortium identified gaps, performed an initial ranking of priority among Tier 1, 2, and 3 gaps, and made recommendations to address those gaps.

The gap analysis comprises six technical topics:

·      Advanced manufacturing

·      Metrology and standards

·      Components and controls

·      Field deployment

·      Techno-economic analysis (TEA)

·      Resources, training and education (RTE).

Two cross-cutting subtopics, wind load and soiling, were also analyzed. Major gaps are highlighted for each topic and sub-topic below.

A roadmap study is first conducted to direct the work planning under the consortium in future years of operation, which includes:

-       Interview leading industrial stakeholders

-       Define a complete set of primary heliostat performance metrics, which includes not only installation cost, but also technical performance (include system degradation) and associated OM cost over the lifetime.

-       Establish baseline heliostat systems with consistent settings on various types of systems: electricity generation and heat generation

-       Identify gaps in the full heliostat development cycle within six core areas (revise the core areas if needed) by working with all stakeholders

-       Collect stakeholder feedback

-       Utilize techno-economic analysis (where applied) to evaluate and rank gaps

-       Identify high-priority R&D and support activities for the National Labs to pursue and for the request-to-proposal to address

-       Project the heliostat development roadmap with a timeline of national lab capabilities development and CSP industry growth.

Presenting Author: Guangdong Zhu National Renewable Energy Laboratory

Presenting Author Biography: Dr. Guangdong Zhu has been a senior researcher since 2010 and, lately, the group manager of thermal energy systems, at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). At NREL, he has been leading research efforts related to solar collector optical characterization, linear Fresnel technology, and renewable energy hybridization. He is the executive director of the newly formed 5-year heliostat consortium co-led by NREL and Sandia National Labs, partnering with ASTRI. He is the associate editor of the ASME Journal of Energy Resources Technology since 2019. He has served as technical/general program chair for ASME Energy Sustainability international conference in 2017 - 2020. He won NREL’s President’s award and Outstanding New Partnership Award in 2016. He has published over 40 peer-reviewed journal/conference papers and given numerous invited presentations at various research institutes. Dr. Zhu obtained his Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from the University of New Mexico in 2006.

Authors:

Guangdong Zhu National Renewable Energy Laboratory