Heliostat Consortium

The Heliostat Consortium (HelioCon) for Concentrating Solar-Thermal Power is focused on improving component performance for the concentrating solar-thermal power industry.

HelioCon—an NREL-led consortium—emphasizes the significance of heliostats as a key component of concentrating solar power (CSP) technologies. CSP with low-cost thermal energy storage can be used either to produce dispatchable electricity or provide high-temperature heat to difficult-to-decarbonize industries, such as cement, steel, and chemical production.

The consortium supports research, development, validation, commercialization, and deployment of low-cost and high-performance heliostats with optimized operations and maintenance for CSP and concentrating solar-thermal applications.

Within HelioCon, NREL, Sandia National Laboratories, and the Australian Solar Thermal Research Institute work closely with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and CSP developers, component suppliers, utilities, and international experts.

Key Research Areas

HelioCon has a designated task lead for each research area. Within each area, the consortium focuses on developing results that will advance heliostat technologies.

• Advanced manufacturing
• Metrology and standards
• Components and controls development
• Field deployment
• Techno-economic analysis
• Resource, training, and education

Objectives

To advance U.S. heliostat technologies, HelioCon engages subject-matter experts and general stakeholders for direct project-level collaboration, external consulting, and mission-specific panels or workshops. HelioCon also serves as a hub to integrate all DOE-funded projects that directly advance heliostat technologies. HelioCon objectives are to:

• Develop strategic core capabilities and infrastructure to support high-performance heliostat manufacturing, validation, and optimization and facilitate industry's ability to design, manufacture, install, and operate central receiver heliostat fields with higher technical and economic performance
• Ensure that these capabilities are readily available to industry, meeting its needs
• Fund research on new technologies with significant potential to improve heliostat field economic performance
• Form U.S. centers of excellence focused on heliostat technology to restore U.S. leadership in heliostat research, development, and validation
• Promote workforce development through encouraging student internships and postdoctoral positions, the formation of a HelioCon early career scientist group to promote networking, and highlight existing training and educational programs in heliostat design, production, and operation.

Background

The consortium is funded by the Solar Energy Technologies Office through the FY 2022–2024 Lab Call. Working with industry, HelioCon is working to achieve DOE SunShot objectives for U.S.-manufactured heliostat cost, performance, and reliability.

A heliostat is a device that continually tilts a mirror or multiple mirror facets to track the sun's movement to reflect sunlight toward a predetermined target—such as a receiver sitting on top of a solar tower. Heliostats are a critical component of CSP and concentrating solar-thermal power tower technologies. A utility-scale heliostat field (100 MWe, for example) may include more than 10,000 heliostats. They represent 30%–50% of the cost of system construction and are a primary driver of operations and maintenance costs. Improvements to heliostat cost, performance, and reliability are necessary to achieve the DOE 2030 solar cost targets of 5 cents/kWh for CSP technology.

Team

HelioCon is led by experts around the world and consists of an Operations Team, Technical Area Leads, and a Board of Advisors.

Contact

To participate and get the latest updates, contact the HelioCon team at heliostat.consortium@nrel.gov.