Guangdong Zhu (NREL)
HelioCon Executive Director and Metrology & Standards Lead
Guangdong.Zhu@nrel.govGuangdong Zhu is the group manager and a senior researcher in the Thermal Energy Systems Group within the Energy Conversion and Storage Systems Center at NREL. The Thermal Energy Systems Group is focused on innovative research and development on concentrating solar power technologies and hybrid thermal energy systems. Guangdong joined NREL as a senior researcher in 2010. His work focuses on solar collector characterization, geothermal power plant modeling and analysis, and renewable energy hybridization. He is the associate editor of the ASME Journal of Energy Resources Technology since 2019. He has served as technical/general program chair for ASME Energy Sustainability international conference in 2017 - 2020. He won NREL’s President’s award and Outstanding New Partnership Award in 2016. He has published over 40 peer-reviewed journal/conference papers and given numerous invited presentations at various research institutes. Dr. Zhu obtained his Ph.D. from the University of New Mexico in 2006.
Margaret Gordon (Sandia NL)
HelioCon Co-Lead
megord@sandia.govDr. Gordon completed her doctorate in inorganic chemistry with a focus on sol-gel chemistry of polar inorganic anions, crystallography, and density functional theory simulations at the Northwestern University in 2002. After her study of zeolites for gas separation membranes at Sandia National Laboratories as a post doctoral researcher, she joined the technical staff at Sandia National Laboratories. Her research in photocatalysis, surface chemistry and composite materials resulted in numerous publications and several patents. From 2017 to 2021 she served as the Deputy Director for the DuraMAT Consortium which is focused on funding infrastructure, research capabilities, and longer-term research in durable materials for photovoltaic (PV) systems to lower the levelized cost of electricity. Since 2021, Margaret has managed the Concentrating Solar Technologies group of 30+ members at Sandia, and the National Solar Thermal Test Facility which is the only large-scale high-flux testing facility in North America.
Mark Mehos (NREL)
HelioCon Partnership Director
Mark.Mehos@nrel.govMark has been with NREL since 1986. He previously managed the Thermal Systems R&D group with an emphasis on Concentrating Solar Power (CSP), thermal energy for grid storage, solar thermal derived fuels, and thermal systems optimization. The emphasis of NREL's CSP program is the development of next generation low cost, high performance, and high reliability systems that use concentrated sunlight to generate power. He is currently the leader for the International Energy Agency’s SolarPACES “Solar Thermal Electric Power Systems” task. The task supports international collaboration on the development of best practices for modeling, acceptance testing, and grid integration of CSP systems. Mark obtained his M.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of California at Berkeley and his B.S. from the University of Colorado.
Randy Brost (Sandia NL)
Advanced Manufacturing Lead
rcbrost@sandia.govDr. Randy Brost is a technical staff member at Sandia National Laboratories in the Concentrating Solar Power Technology group. He is currently leading projects related to concentrating solar optics and autonomy. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Carnegie-Mellon University in 1991, and performed robotics research at Sandia National Laboratories until 1997. He then served at Eastman Kodak Company until 2007, implementing a variety of custom software tools supporting advanced manufacturing, metrology, and physics analysis. He then joined SkyFuel, a concentrating solar power company, where he helped develop utility-scale solar collectors, and applied computational methods to optimize new solar collector designs. He returned to Sandia in 2011, and pursued a variety of computer science research topics before joining the Concentrating Solar Technology group in early 2020.
Kenneth Armijo (Sandia NL)
Components & Controls Lead
kmarmijo@sandia.govDr. Kenneth Armijo is a systems engineering staff member who leads molten salt and molten alkali metals R&D at the National Solar Thermal Test Facility (NSTTF). His research interests are in alternative energy technologies and sustainability, as they pertain to scientific and technological innovation, business and policy. Dr. Armijo holds a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley with minors in Energy and Resources, and business credentials in Management of Technology from Berkeley's Haas School of Business. Presently, Dr. Armijo is the lead for the HelioCON Components and Controls Task, which is co-lead with Matt Mueller from NREL. His research in concentrating solar power (CSP) also consists of system design for high-temperature (>720 °C) thermodynamic and commercial R&D systems, employing ternary chloride molten salts and alkali metals (sodium) as the heat transfer fluid. He is the test site Principle Investigator (PI) for multiple U.S. Dept. of Energy (DOE) projects in CSP that also includes pumped thermal energy systems. His research has also consisted of falling particles for centralized concentrating solar receivers and solar reactors for industrial process heat applications and climate change mitigation technologies. He also leads research activities pertaining to solar Stirling Engine applications as well as for solar reactor R&D and high-flux materials characterization. Dr. Armijo also serves as a lead Test Director for high-temperature materials research for Aerospace applications, such as Re-Entry and Hypersonic vehicles.
Jeremy Sment(Sandia NL)
Field Deployment Lead
jsment@sandia.govJeremy Sment is a mechanical engineer at Sandia National Labs. Jeremy focused on wind loading over heliostat fields and long-range flux mapping and calibration tools at the NSTTF for his graduate work through 2013. He rejoined the NSTTF in 2018 to support the Gen 3 particle pathway where he is focused on thermal energy storage and the handling of solid particles and commercial scale particle system integration focused on tower design and technoeconomic analysis. Jeremy joined the HelioCon effort in late 2021 and has conducted a series of interviews with industry experts to develop a high-level understanding of solar field deployments in the context of past lessons learned and current US energy market trends. Jeremy holds a Masters of Science in Mechanical Engineering at UNM.
Chad Augustine (NREL)
Techno-economic Analysis Lead
Chad.Augustine@nrel.govChad has been with NREL since 2009. He is currently a Senior Analyst in the Thermal Systems R&D group and leads the CSP Systems Analysis task. Recently he co-authored a report titled “The Role of Concentrating Solar-Thermal Technologies in a Decarbonized U.S. Grid” as part of the 2021 Solar Futures Study. His work at NREL also includes analysis of energy storage technologies and geothermal technologies. Chad earned his PhD in Chemical Engineering and MS in Chemical Engineering Practice from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and his BS in Chemical Engineering from Iowa State University.
Rebecca Mitchell (NREL)
Resource, Training, and Education Lead
Rebecca.Mitchell@nrel.govDr. Rebecca Mitchell has been a researcher at NREL for four years. She now serves as the team lead on the development on the Non-intrusive Optical (NIO) technology which surveys Concentrating Solar Power (CSP) solar fields using UAS imaging. She performs algorithm development and theoretical modeling to develop technologies to characterize heliostat optics. She has led UAS data collection campaigns of heliostats at Sandia National Labs, Crescent Dunes plant, and Cerro Dominador plant. She has been involved in three publications and a recently issued patent for the NIO technology. Dr. Mitchell has mentored several graduate and Science Undergraduate Laboratory Internships (SULI) interns and now serves as the lead of the Resource, Training, and Education topic for the Heliostat Consortium project. She received her PhD and MS in Applied Mathematics from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 2017.