Session: 05-11 Heliostat Consortium 1

Paper Number: 117413

117413 - Heliocon: Evaluation of Composite Materials for Heliostat Cost Reduction 

The U.S. Department of Energy and the Heliocon consortium have established the objective of reducing heliostat costs to $50/m².   An initial roadmap report indicates that current heliostat designs are $100/m² and more and therefore there is need for cost reduction in the structural and other components. A heliostat SolidWorks structural model has been created with a reflector area of 25 m², a torque tube with a 5.2 m length, a pilon 4 m long, a linear elevation drive, and a slew azimuth drive. This design, constructed of steel, provides baseline deflection and stiffness under a 1,750 kgf on the elevation drive, 1,500 N-m torque on the slew drive, and the facet under 38 m/s wind speeds.  A separate wind loading model has been developed for the baseline design under dynamic wind conditions which enables calculations of deflections in the various components of the heliostat.  An established roster of suitable metal alternative materials will be considered including: glass, basalt, and carbon reinforced polymer (GFRP, BFRP, and CFRP), and engineered wood.  The baseline design will be modified to achieve matching load response to steel design.  The resulting materials requirements will be evaluated within cost trends for each material to determine if there is potential for cost reduction with the various composites materials.

Presenting Author: Matthew Muller NREL

Presenting Author Biography: Since 2008 Matthew Muller has been a research engineer within the PV Performance and Reliability group. The focus of his work has covered topics such as PV soiling, PV surface coating durability, PV, concentrating PV (CPV) module and system performance, thermal modeling, spectral performance modeling, methods for on-sun CPV cell temperature evaluation, solar trackers and heliostats, IEC standards development, test design, prototyping and design of instrumentation, data acquisition systems, programming and data analysis . He is a member of ANSI has served as a technical expert within the IEC. He led the IEC effort to publish the technical specification, TC 62727, the design qualification standard, IEC 62817 (both covering solar trackers) and IEC 62670-3, standardizing performance measurements and power rating procedures for CPV devices. He serves as colead for the Heliocon heliostat components and controls subtask.