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Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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At least 19 records
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2025

Heliostat optical error inspection with polarimetric imaging drone

On a Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) field, optical errors have significant impacts on the collection efficiency of heliostats. Fast, cost-effective, labor-efficient, and non-intrusive autonomous field inspection remains a challenge. Approaches using imaging drone, i.e., Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) system integrated with high resolution visible imaging sensors, have been developed to address these challenges; however, these approaches are often limited by insufficient imaging contrast. Here, in this study, we report a polarimetry-based method with a polarization imaging system integrated on UAV to enhance imaging contrast for in-situ detection of heliostat mirrors without interrupting field operation. We developed an optical model for skylight polarization pattern to simulate the polarization images of heliostat mirrors and obtained optimized waypoints for polarimetric imaging drone flight path to capture images with enhanced contrast. The polarimetric imaging-based method improved the success rate of edge detections in scenarios which were challenging for mirror edge detection with conventional imaging sensors. We have performed field tests to achieve significantly enhanced heliostat edge detection success rate and investigate the feasibility of integrating polarimetric imaging method with existing imaging-based heliostat inspection methods, i.e., Polarimetric Imaging Heliostat Inspection Method (PIHIM). Our preliminary field test results suggest that the PIHIM hold the promise to enable sufficient imaging contrast for real-time autonomous imaging and detection of heliostat field, thus suitable for non-interruptive fast CSP field inspection during its operation.

CSP Field↗
DOE OSTI2023

Toward Autonomous Field Inspection of CSP Collectors With a Polarimetric Imaging Drone

We developed a polarimetric imaging drone to perform field inspections of heliostats and carried out field tests at Sandia’s National Solar Thermal Test Facility (NSTTF). The preliminary results show that Degree of Linear Polarization (DOLP) and Angle of Polarization (AOP) images greatly enhanced the edge detection results compared with the conventional visible images, supporting fast and accurate detection of heliostat mirror edges and cracks. The system holds the promise to enable future automated detection of heliostats optical errors and mirror defects.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2024

Field Deployable Mirror Soiling Detection Based on Polarimetric Imaging

Heliostat mirror soiling is one of the significant factors for reduced optical efficiency of Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) fields. However, it remains challenging to determine the mirror soiling patterns across the large area of the CSP field. Here we propose a fast and field deployable inspection method to measure the heliostat mirror soiling levels based on polarization images in regular daylight settings without additional light sources. Under sunny and clear sky conditions, we have demonstrated accurate measurement of reflection efficiency (error ~1%) for mirrors with different soiling levels.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2026

A polarimetry-based field-deployable non-interruptive mirror soiling detection method

The soiling level of heliostat mirrors in Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) fields is one of the key factors that significantly influences optical efficiency. State-of-the-art methods of monitoring heliostats soiling levels still face various challenges, including slow speed, labor-intensive operations, resolution and accuracy constraints or interruptions to solar field operations. Here, we present a rapid, cost-effective, and non-intrusive method for mirror soiling detection based on polarimetric imaging, referred to as Polarimetric Imaging-based Mirror Soiling (PIMS). The compact PIMS device is designed for integration with unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), enabling rapid, large-area assessments of heliostat mirrors for efficient soiling detection. Our method utilizes the correlation between the Degree of Linear Polarization (DoLP) and surface soiling level based on Mie scattering theory and Monte Carlo simulations. Field deployment of the PIMS method requires minimal device installation, and its UAV-based operation allows for soiling detection without interrupting plant activities. The PIMS method holds the potential for mirror soiling detection across various concentrated solar power (CSP) plants and can be further adapted for other types of solar fields, such as parabolic trough systems.

CSP Field↗
DOE OSTI2018

Base Fields of CSP-Rings. II

We prove that every field of characteristic 0 whose cardinality does not exceed the bounding number 6 is a base field of some csp-ring.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2021

DOE's National Solar Thermal Test Facility Operations and Maintenance (Final Report FY19-21)

Sandia National Laboratories has been tasked to operate and maintain the National Solar Thermal Test Facility (NSTTF) located in Kirtland Airforce Base near Albuquerque, NM. The NSTTF provides established test platforms and experienced researchers and technologists in the field of Concentrating Solar Technologies (CST) and Concentrating Solar Power (CSP). This three-year project seeks to maintain the NSTTF for development, testing, and application of new CSP technologies that are instrumental in advancing the state-of-the-art in support of SunShot and Generation 3 CSP technology goals. In turn, these technologies will form the foundation of the global CSP industry and continue to advance the technology to new levels of efficiency, higher temperatures, lower costs, lower risk, and higher reliability. The NSTTF provides established test platforms and highly experienced researchers and technologists in the CSP field.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2015

Diverging polygon-based modeling (DPBM) of concentrated solar flux distributions

This paper presents an efficient and robust methodology for modeling concentrated solar flux distributions. Compared to ray tracing methods, which provide high accuracy but can be computationally intensive, this approach makes a number of simplifying assumptions in order to reduce complexity by modeling incident and reflected flux as a series of simple geometric diverging polygons, then applying shading and blocking effects. A reduction in processing time (as compared to ray tracing) allows for evaluating and visualizing numerous combinations of engineering and operational variables (easily exceeding 106 unique iterations) to ascertain instantaneous, transient, and annual system performance. The method is demonstrated on a linear Fresnel reflector array and a number of variable iteration examples presented. While some precision is sacrificed for computational speed, flux distributions were compared to ray tracing (SolTrace) and average concentration ratio generally found to agree within ~3%. Furthermore, this method presents a quick and very flexible coarse adjust method for concentrated solar power (CSP) field design, and can be used to both rapidly gain an understanding of system performance as well as to narrow variable constraint windows for follow-on high accuracy system optimization.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2023

Parametric analysis on optimized design of hybrid solar power plants

There is increasing interest in utility-scale solar power plants with storage which can flexibly dispatch renewable energy to the grid. However, plant design possesses many degrees of freedom and non-obvious trade-offs in performance. Software tools can estimate or optimize the performance of a specific plant configuration under market and weather conditions of interest; the associated cost parameters and operating assumptions strongly influence estimates of plant performance and decisions regarding optimal sizing. We employ the National Renewable Energy Laboratory's Hybrid Optimization and Performance Platform, which incorporates optimal dispatch when evaluating plant performance, and investigate the sensitivity to weather and market conditions, operating limitations, and the presence of a capacity-based incentive. We demonstrate changes in plant performance and optimal sizing with respect to these inputs and discuss implications. Here results show that PV-with-battery designs are more profitable under our assumptions, but that designs including a concentrated solar power (CSP) system produce significantly greater annual energy; and that CSP-with-thermal energy storage designs maximizing the benefit-to-cost ratio have an input-dependent linear relationship between the CSP field solar multiple and the hours of storage as the project budget varies.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2019

Development of a Planar Focusing Collector for CSP

In the field of the concentrating solar power (CSP) technology, the parabolic trough is a common choice for a solar collector. Parabolic troughs are highly reflective curved mirrors that take incident sunlight and focus it onto a line-shaped receiver that runs down the center of troughs. The receivers are generally heat-absorbing pipes containing a heat transfer fluid that delivers the collected thermal energy to steam turbines or engines for generating electricity. However, parabolic troughs are constrained by wind loads and cost of materials and support structure. The goal of this project was to develop a planar focusing collector (PFC) that would serve as an alternative to the parabolic trough. An ideal PFC is ultrathin (less than a few microns) and lightweight, and could be manufactured in a manner that is scalable and low cost. Furthermore, these features would be attractive to CSP technology because of the potential to reduce cost and complexity of installation and maintenance. The work pursued in this project attempted to actualize the PFC concept by utilizing advances in the emerging area of metasurfaces, which rely on the nanopatterning of surfaces to control the amplitude and phase of light at length scales smaller than an optical wavelength. Academic pursuits of metasurface technology predominately employ electron-beam lithography (EBL) for fabrication because the technique offers highly reliable nanopatterning of surfaces with a spatial resolution of ~10 nm. However, due to the techno-economic constraints of the DOE’s SunShot program, particularly cost-effective scalability, the use of EBL was avoided in this project. Rather, fabrication approaches that lend themselves to scalable manufacturing by way of stamping or imprinting were favored. Ultimately, the tradeoffs with using such methods was the larger feature size—on the order of ~150 um critical dimension—resulting in poorer control of light compared to structures fabricated by EBL. A summary of our 2-year investigation on this topic is presented herein. We begin by presenting highlights of our 1 st -year efforts using plasmonics, i.e., metallic nanostructures, as the building block for our PFC. The limitations in this approach are subsequently summarized. We then review the strategy we employed during the final year of our project, in particular utilizing insulating or dielectric materials as the light controlling medium. We round out the report discussing the results of our findings from using this approach. The report is relatively self-contained in that and no prior knowledge of optics or nanotechnology is assumed and technical jargon is kept at a minimum.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2023

Summary Paper: An Initial Heliostat Supply Chain Analysis

This paper summarizes the prior analysis, key findings, and recommendations from the published report titled “Initial Heliostat Supply Chain Analysis” [1]. Globally, the growing demand for concentrating solar power (CSP) technologies, primarily for electricity generation plants has been met with supply chains primarily composed of plentiful commodity materials such as steel, aluminum, and glass. Often the commodity materials can be sourced in the domestic market where power plant will be constructed. Although specialty components are required for CSP solar fields —including mirror panels used for heliostat applications—these specialty components constitute about 30-50% of total system installed costs [2]. Only a few companies and countries, including the United States, have developed the capacity to supply such specialty components. The U.S. heliostat supply chain at present is comprised of few companies (e.g., CSP developers), component suppliers, and is its infancy. By 2035, with current and aggressive solar photovoltaic (PV) capacity expansions, there is the potential for 500,000–1,500,000 direct and indirect jobs in the areas of manufacturing, installation and development, and operations and maintenance (O&M) [3]. Utilizing the CSP capacity estimations the recent NREL report [4], the construction of 39 gigawatts (GW) of CSP (assuming mainly power tower) in the U.S. could lead to approximately 195,000 manufacturing, construction, and O&M jobs. This does not include the longer-term jobs and economic impact (e.g., taxes from plant operations staff) from operating the plants once constructed. It is recommended that further CSP component and system supply chain analysis and modelling be undertaken.

Kurup, Parthiv (ORCID:0000000217356703)↗
DOE OSTI2018

Hybridizing a geothermal power plant with concentrating solar power and thermal storage to increase power generation and dispatchability

Geothermal power plants often deploy less than their full power capacity due to declining geothermal resources. Integrating heat from a concentrating solar power (CSP) collector field increases the power output at low cost. This article considers five methods of solar heat addition in a double-flash geothermal plant. The most promising solution converts solar heat into electrical work with an efficiency of 24.3%. The economic feasibility and optimal sizing of the solar field and thermal stores are evaluated. A hybrid plant that increases power generation from 22 to 24 MWe has a Levelized Cost of Electricity (LCOE) of 0.07 +/- 0.01 $/kWhe. Adding three hours of storage increases the LCOE to 0.08 +/- 0.01 $/kWhe. Photovoltaic systems are considered to be a low-cost renewable technology, but an equivalent photovoltaic system with battery storage costs 0.15 +/- 0.07 $/kWhe due to the high cost and replacement rate of batteries compared to thermal storage. The hybrid plant also has a lower LCOE than a conventional CSP plant. If the dispatchability that thermal storage provides is rewarded with higher electricity prices, calculations indicate storage becomes an attractive investment when discharged power receives 1.75 times the typical price of electricity.

15 GEOTHERMAL ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2022

Initial Heliostat Supply Chain Analysis

Globally, the growing demand for concentrating solar power (CSP) technologies, primarily for electricity generation plants has been met with supply chains primarily composed of plentiful commodity materials such as steel, aluminum, and glass. Often the majority of the commodity materials are sourced within the domestic market where generating plants are constructed. Although specialty components are required for CSP solar field components - including mirror panels used for heliostat applications - these specialty components constitute about 30-50% of total system installed costs. Only a few companies and countries, including the United States, have developed the capacity to supply such specialty components. This report is an initial assessment of the global and U.S. heliostat supply chain.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2024

Dynamic Wind Loading on CSP Collectors Caused by Turbulent Wind Fluctuations: Insights from a 2-Year Field Campaign

Concentrating Solar Power (CSP) is a promising solar technology for electricity generation with thermal energy storage and with the additional benefit of industrial heat production. Wind loading on CSP collector structures, such as parabolic troughs or heliostats, is one of the primary drivers of their structural design costs. In particular, dynamic wind loading is a major source of uncertainty in the collector design process, which heavily relies on wind tunnel testing. In the field, the turbulent nature of the incoming wind creates fluctuating loads (support structure loads and resulting mirror deflections) on the collectors, with impacts on fatigue lifetime and optical performance. As is well known, wind tunnel tests cannot entirely reproduce the complex turbulent wind conditions typically observed at full-scale plants. To shed light on this topic, NREL initiated a field campaign at the operational Nevada Solar One (NSO) powerplant that uses parabolic troughs as solar collectors. The aim of the project is a detailed characterization of prevailing wind and turbulence conditions and resulting operational loads on parabolic troughs. We use the published 2-year dataset of high-resolution combined wind and structural loads measurements [1] to characterize the dynamic structural wind response. For quantifying dynamic wind loading, we apply the concept of admittance functions, which are spectral transfer functions that couple the turbulent wind to resulting structural loads (aerodynamic admittance), and to the structural response (mechanical admittance). In practice, aerodynamic admittance describes which turbulent eddy sizes are effective in creating structural loads. The mechanical admittance describes in which frequency ranges these loads are reinforced or dampened by the structure. While these functions are an established concept in civil engineering, their recent application to a single full-scale heliostat [2] proved their broader applicability to CSP collectors. Here, we present a characterization of admittance functions for full-scale parabolic trough collectors and show how wind characteristics (mean wind speed and direction, turbulent kinetic energy, turbulent length scales), the sun-tracking trough angle, and row position alter the admittance functions. Further, we study to which extent the admittance functions are universal for a specific trough geometry and how our findings compare to reported heliostat results. References [1] https://data.openei.org/submissions/5938. [2] Blume, K., Roger, M., and Pitz-Paal, R. 2023b. "Simplified analytical model to describe wind loads and wind-induced tracking deviations of heliostats." Solar Energy, 256, 96-109. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.solener.2023.03.055.

admittance functions↗
DOE OSTI2024

System and Component Development of Particle-Based Pumped Thermal Energy Storage

Reliable power supply from variable renewable resources requires energy storage at various scales to overcome resource intermittency. Long-duration energy storage (LDES, 10-100 hours) can improve dispatchability and grid reliability with increasing levels of renewable power supply. Thermal energy storage (TES) has siting flexibility and the ability to store a large capacity of energy, and thus has the potential to meet the LDES need and provide charging and discharging durations beyond the economic capacity of conventional batteries. TES technology has evolved from concentrating solar thermal power (CSP) generation and is recognized as an economic large-scale energy storage method. A standalone electric-thermal energy storage system supporting renewable integration of wind and solar power without CSP solar field can firm renewable generation and boost overall grid resilience and security.

concentrating solar thermal power↗
DOE OSTI2022

Chapter 3: Solar Optics and Principles

Solar irradiation originating from a finite-sized sun disc, as well as its various interactions with the atmosphere and reflective elements, results in the distribution of concentrated light at the receiver. The study of these interactions and the computation of the resulting flux distribution constitute the field of CSP optics. CSP optics is subdivided into two categories, namely, path-independent optics and geometric optics. This chapter deals primarily with the technology agnostic path-independent optics and attempts to convey some fundamental principles and to guide researchers. The path-independent optics introduced here includes sun shapes, the impact of surface microscopic and macroscopic structure, and atmospheric attenuation.

concentrating solar power↗
DOE OSTI2024

Polarimetry-Enhanced Imaging towards Autonomous Solar Field and Receiver Inspections

During the typical operation of a Concentrating Solar Power (CSP) plant, a large portion of the energy (~45%) can be lost due to various imperfect conditions, such as blocking, shading, mirror soiling, tracking and canting errors, etc. It is necessary to develop efficient and effective field inspection technology to optically survey and characterize a CSP field, which can be used as an input for autonomous control, maintenance scheduling and spot repair whenever necessary to maximize the overall efficiency of the plant. In this project, We aim to apply polarimetric imaging for CSP collector and receiver inspection and develop polarimetric drone cameras (via integrating polarimetric imagers onto drones) for autonomous field inspection in CSP plants.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗