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Solar Energy- Today's resource for a brighter tomorrow.

drone based NIO technology developed at NREL

News

HelioCon is heading to the 2024 SolarPACES Annual Conference!

Many of our researchers are presenting at the premiere global CSP conference this year, and they’re covering a broad range of topics, including wind loading on heliostats, the commercial readiness of several new metrology and testing tools, and how HelioCon’s work is advancing the next generation of CSP technologies on many fronts. In case you cannot join us in Rome—learn more about our researchers’ latest work here.

drone based NIO technology developed at NREL

News

DOE’s Heliostat Consortium Awards $3 Million for Six Projects To Advance Heliostat Technology and Workforce for Commercial Readiness

The selected projects will work closely with HelioCon’s research and industry members to help lower the cost of concentrating solar-thermal power and support the next generation of highly trained CSP workers.

ReTNA Technology Development

Illustration of ReTNA equipment and setup ease. Top: A ReTNA portable layout (left) and larger stationary setup (right). Several layouts have been demonstrated this year, for different applications.

ReTNA workflow for measurement with a smaller target.

Featured Project

ReTNA Technology Development

Description:
The Reflected Target Non-intrusive Assessment (ReTNA) tool measures mirror surface slope and facet canting error for heliostat qualification, R&D, and quality assurance on the heliostat assembly line. It is designed to adopt simple, low-cost equipment such as modular, lightweight printed targets and off-the-shelf cameras.

Project Lead:
Devon Kesseli (NREL)

Status:
In next year, complete further rigorous validation campaigns with research and industry partners and collaborate with industrial partners to demonstrate commercial ReTNA layouts.

Giovanni Picotti

Featured Researcher

Kyle Sperber (NREL)

Kyle is a graduate intern at the National Renewable Energy Labs (NREL), where he works on Non-Intrusive Optical Metrology (NIO). For NIO he researches computer vision and image processing techniques for error metrology of heliostats using drones. This provides CSP field operators information to make informed decisions on the operation of their plants and provides more reliable data for economic and performance metrics for existing and new fields. He is also a student at the Colorado School of Mines studying Mathematics, Physics and Computer Science.

 

Past Featured Researchers

The Heliostat Consortium (HelioCon) supports research, development, validation, commercialization, and deployment of low-cost and high-performance heliostats.

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HelioCon seminar 11-15-23


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