Heliogen Summer Internship
Products to help automate the production and maintenance of Heliostats
During summer 2019 I had to privilege to intern at an incredible company called Heliogen. They are a solar company that uses concentrated solar power (CSP) to create hydrogen fuel from water. During my internship there they were in the final stages of planning their demo facility and the beginning stages of building it out.
During my time there I worked on two major projects that incorporated elements on mechanical, electrical, and software engineering. The projects were targeted to help make their production process more efficient, as well as monitor their heliostat fields when in use. The first project was called the phoseon scanner, named after the high power UV light system used. This project helped automate the production of the mirrors used in the heliostats. I designed, built, tested, and created operating procedures for the product shown on the left. This system was implemented to build out the approximately 400 mirrors used in the demo facility. The second project was designing and developing a low cost data acquisition system to monitor various mechanical and thermal characteristics in the field when exposed to environmental conditions. This project involved research and selecting the various sensors, external circuitry, and microcontroller based on design specifications, generating the software to control the electronics and record data, and finally designing the enclosure. Learn more about the company here: https://heliogen.com/ Processes: sensor design, power distribution, python, motor control, embedded programming, mechanical design, Solidworks 3D modeling, 3D printing, thermal design
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