Resources, Training, and Education Under the Heliostat Consortium: Industry Gap Analysis and Building a Resource Database

Journal Article · Mon Sep 30 00:00:00 EDT 2024 · Journal of Solar Energy Engineering

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1115/1.4066495· OSTI ID:2449677

Mitchell, Rebecca ^[1]; Zhou, Yu ^[1]; Grabel, Michael ^[1]; Zhu, Guangdong ^[1]; Sment, Jeremy ^[2]

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1. National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), Golden, CO (United States). Energy Conversion and Storage Systems Center
2. Sandia National Lab. (SNL-NM), Albuquerque, NM (United States)

Concentrating solar power is not a widely deployed or known technology area, and the heliostat workforce community in the United States is currently small, with knowledge and expertise not widely available. The resource, training, and education (RTE) topic within the Heliostat Consortium (HelioCon) was established to address this. RTE encompasses resources, practices, and programs to ensure that (1) newcomers to the heliostat development community have an adequate knowledge base and training to conduct R&D efforts, (2) outsiders to the field are provided with resources and opportunities to join the workforce, and (3) the workforce community is a productive, healthy, and fulfilling environment for all workers. In the first year of the project, a roadmap study was conducted, in which the major gaps in RTE were identified by consulting experts in the industry, with the top gap being the lack of public accessibility to concentrating solar-thermal power (CSP) knowledge. Here, to address this, the HelioCon team has been developing a centralized web-based resource database, containing a reference library, educational videos, lists of components suppliers and software/metrology tools, a power tower plant database, and information on existing standards/guidelines.

• Research Organization: National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), Golden, CO (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), Renewable Power Office. Solar Energy Technologies Office
• Grant/Contract Number: AC36-08GO28308
• OSTI ID: 2449677
• Report Number(s): NREL/JA--5700-88350; MainId:89126; UUID:0faa6972-c8ed-46fa-82e3-ac7f4b84c805; MainAdminId:71462
• Journal Information: Journal of Solar Energy Engineering, Journal Name: Journal of Solar Energy Engineering Journal Issue: 6 Vol. 146; ISSN 0199-6231
• Publisher: ASME
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

14 SOLAR ENERGY
collector
concentrating solar power
education
heliostat
resource
training