May 7 2010
Utility Scale Solar, Inc. (USS) has been utilizing Autodesk, Inc.’s Autodesk Inventor software for speeding up the development of the company’s sun-tracking systems and in the process has saved huge sums of money in capital investment.
Thanks to the Clean Tech Partner Program, which offers software grants for upcoming clean tech firms in the North American region and Autodesk reseller KETIV Technologies of Autodesk, USS has been introduced to Digital Prototyping with Autodesk Inventor.
In general, most solar firms have been focusing on developing better surfaces for harnessing solar energy. USS, on the other hand, has been focusing on customizing the sun-tracking equipment’s performance. This has led to the development of its heliostats and Megahelion trackers based on this novel solar drive system. The drive system of USS facilitates any kind of solar application to precisely and smoothly reflect or follow the sunlight onto a receiver, in a cost-effective manner.
Since heliostat expenses represent 30–50% of the capital required for solar projects, low-cost heliostats such as the Megahelion are crucial to make solar power an economical and scalable option.
USS indicates that the efficiencies gained by using the Autodesk Inventor software had led to the savings of around $2–3 million in capital to the company. For instance, USS utilizes Autodesk Inventor to conduct finite element analysis (FEA) simulation for testing the performance of products. The company also utilizes the data management software Autodesk Vault Manufacturing for securely controlling and distributing data among its engineers. Moreover, USS utilizes Autodesk Showcase software for marketing the solar energy collection products of the company.