BrightSource, the headquarters of which is in Auckland, California, is devoted to designing, developing and deploying photothermal solar energy. As a leader in global photothermal solar energy system and a pure green energy provider, it has attracted numerous investors like BP and Google. In 2015, it founded a joint venture company with Shanghai Electric, thus entering the Chinese market.
Problems to solve in this project:
In 2009, an innovation team of BrightSource from Israel invested on R & D of the first tower-type solar thermal plant mirror-surface bracket in Mojave Desert, California, USA, namely 392 MW Ivanpah Project. Product manufacturing was entrusted to another Israeli company. Nevertheless, this company was faced with various difficulties in production and failed to realize technology implementation at realistic level. When developing the second and third generations of products, the foundry entrusted by the customer could not complete so complex engineering products.
Our services:
iMotion mainly took charge of product design, drawing, process development, set up production line, production, test, quality control flow, technology update for iterative products, etc.
● During the development procedure of the first-generation products, in order to accurately control solar energy flow, iMotion team elevated the final backlash following the assembly of hundreds of parts, and repetition accuracy within 600 mm extension amplitude, to limits of industrial products, and guaranteed only 0.2 mm error of 15 square meters reflecting surface, giving the maximum solar energy flow to the energy-gathering tower and generating the maximum energy. We participated in design, development and manufacturing of all driving, supporting and fixing components except the reflecting mirror, so we accumulated abundant technical reserves.
● Intending to maintain the same accuracy under the strong impact of wind, we have optimized mechanical structure and increased rotation stability of brackets.
● iMotion developed FCT software to ensure that each component could reach high-efficiency index with lower energy consumption.
● Motor-driven worm and gear mode was applied to the third-generation products. iMotion designed a whole set of product test equipment to simulate efficiency performance of the products in desert and windstorm, and efforts were made to ensure that each product could pass the test. We introduced novel traceability system into the quality assurance system, so we could trace production date, raw materials, etc. for critical parts.
● iMotion established a production line and completed the product manufacturing and inspection, and delivered 173,000 and 80,000 sets of the first and second generations of products respectively.
We have many years of experience in product development and have helped our customers to solve many reliability and system accuracy-related problems. We have incomparable advantages to other companies no matter in cost or technical capability. 173,000 sets of the first-generation products were applied to whole-line power at the beginning of 2014, being named and praised by President Obama and Governor Schwarzenegger on weekly meeting and press conference for many times.
