Apply Now for American-Made Heliostat Prize

Deadline: 08/31/2023

Size of the Grant: $100,000

Grant Duration: 3 months

Details:

The American-Made Heliostat Prize is a series of three consecutive contests designed to accelerate technology innovation through the design, development, and demonstration of selected heliostat components that drive the cost and performance of heliostats, ultimately supporting the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Solar Energy Technologies Office (SETO) goals of low-cost solar-thermal energy for both high-temperature industrial process heating, as well as high-efficiency electricity production, coupled with thermal energy storage.

In this prize, SETO is seeking to reduce the cost of heliostats by specifically focusing on reducing costs, or by validating the performance of novel components.

The Heliostat Prize uses a program structure designed to strengthen and scale critical connections that accelerate and sustain American innovation through two intertwined components: prize competitions and the American-Made Network. The unique American-Made Network takes a structured approach to bring diverse sources of support, such as DOE’s national laboratories (coupling with the growing field of heliostat metrology), business incubators, and prototype fabrication facilities, together under one umbrella. This approach is designed to be flexible and scalable and to extend beyond solar to other technology domains and sectors. The program makes it faster and easier for the nation to transform innovative research and ideas into early-stage concepts and then build prototypes that are ready for validation. As competitors work to win cash prizes and other benefits, they are connected with mentoring, training, and other services from the American-Made Network using an intelligent matchmaking tool, resulting in the long-term success of participants and U.S. manufacturing.

Program Goal Requirements

Only submissions relevant to the goals of this program are eligible to compete. The Prize Administrator must conclude that all the following statements are true when applied to your submission:

• The proposed solution is related to the heliostat industry.
• The majority of activities that are described in and support the submission package are performed in the United States and have the potential to benefit the U.S. solar market.
• The proposed solution represents an innovation that will move the industry beyond its current state.
• The proposed solution will have a pathway to economic viability in the terrestrial power market.
• The proposed solution is not dependent on new, pending, or proposed federal, state, or local government legislation, resolutions, appropriations, measures, or policies.
• The proposed solution does not involve the lobbying of any federal, state, or local government office.
• The proposed solution is based on fundamental technical principles and is consistent with a basic understanding of the U.S. market economy.
• The submission content sufficiently confirms the competitor’s intent to commercialize early-stage technology and establish a viable U.S.-based business in the near future with revenues that do not solely depend on licensing fees of intellectual property.

Prize Focus Area Categories

• Heliostat Structures
  • This focus area includes concepts replacing the heliostat support structure with new materials that may provide an opportunity to reduce costs. New materials that replace the steel structure should maintain or increase performance, as stated above, over the expected 30-year lifetime requirement. In addition to the considerations below, the designer should include a discussion of the likelihood of the product becoming a commercially available product in the future in their submission narrative.
  • Initial concepts should consider:
    • Reducing structural cost without a negative impact on performance over 30 years of operation
    • Meeting structural performance needs over 30 years of operation
    • Enhancing buildability or automation in manufacturing
    • Reducing weight from the equivalent steel structure
    • Meeting hail, wind, and moisture performance targets.
• Mirror Facets
  • The reflective surface of a heliostat is made up of one or more mirrored facets. These facets are often comprised of a mirror and structural backing. SETO is seeking a composite facet design with 3 mm or less of highly reflective glass mirror or other reflective material, capable of maintaining or increasing performance, as stated above, as well as the following optical requirements: Average Reflectivity > 95%;  Precision < 1.5 mrad total Root Mean Square (RMS). In addition to the considerations below, the designer should consider the likelihood of the product becoming a commercially available product in the future.
  • Initial concepts should consider:
    • Reducing facet cost without a negative impact in performance over 30 years of operation
    • Reducing operations and maintenance costs over 30 years of operation
    • Providing a facet mirror focal length of ~100 meters
    • Enhancing facet performance
    • Reducing thermal transient impact on optical performance
    • Reducing or eliminating the use of steel
    • Reducing weight from the equivalent steel facet structure
    • The ability to quickly perform infield pointing adjustments to the facet (canting), when required
    • Meeting hail, wind, and moisture performance targets.
• Wireless Control Systems
  • Maturing wireless control systems to a commercial off-the-shelf product would ultimately provide tremendous risk and cost reduction, eliminating the need for heliostat designers to take on the software development. SETO seeks to mature the heliostat wireless control system. In addition to the considerations below, the designer should consider the likelihood of the product becoming a commercially available product in the future, working in multiple CSP plants without significant code changes.
  • Initial concepts should consider software that is:
    • Flexible and variable driven (5000–100,000 nodes); available to operate at multiple sites with variable changes via an input file, database, or similar
    • Secure from cyber attacks
    • Able to safely stow itself upon detecting an attack or fault Designed for automated self-calibration of heliostats (enhancing plant performance)
    • Fault tolerant with a fault tolerant hardware architecture.

Funding Information

• Winners: Up to 9
• Prize: $100,000 in cash
• Time: 3 months

Eligibility Criteria

In keeping with the goal of growing a community of innovators, competitors are encouraged to form diverse, multidisciplinary teams while developing their concept. The HeroX platform provides a space where parties interested in collaboration can post information about themselves and learn about others who are also interested in competing in this contest.

Concept Contest Eligibility

• Individuals, teams of individuals, private entities, and nonfederal government entities (such as states, counties, tribes, municipalities, and academic institutions) are eligible to compete in the Concept contest.
• A single competitor or team may submit a maximum of two submissions. If a competitor is listed as a team member of a submission which they are not leading, this shall count as one of their two allowed submissions. If more than two submissions are received from a single competitor or team, only the two most recently submitted submissions will be considered.

For more information, visit American-Made Challenges.