Strong efforts are being made to drive heliostat cost down. These efforts are summarised to give an update on heliostat technology comprising: determination of wind loads, heliostat dimensioning, solutions for the different sub-functions of a heliostat, a review of commercially available and prototype heliostat designs, canting, manufacturing, qualification, heliostat field layout, and mirror cleaning. There is evidence that commercial heliostat costs have dropped significantly in the past few years, with commercial suppliers of heliostat technologies now claiming heliostat field costs around 100 USD/m 2. With new approaches even target cost of 75$/m² seem to be realistic.

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A complete set of innovations are combined to a new heliostat of minimum cost. The main improvements are a monolithic sandwich-cantilever-arm concentrator of low material and fabrication cost, a lay down of the panels during storms to reduce the maximum wind loading of the structure, and a closed loop control to reduce the accuracy requirements on the mechanical components of the tracker. The design of the main heliostat components is described. The dimensioning of the heliostat is based on wind loads determined by wind tunnel tests. The resulting cost reduction and an outlook on possible modifications for further cost reduction is given.

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The improvements of the mechanical structure of the current rim drive heliostat generation with chain drive system and monolithic sandwich structure is described. The improvements of the mechanical structure result in increased torsional stiffness of the pylon, reduced manufacturing effort, increased life time of the chain gears, and better access to the drives. Dynamic wind loads were determined by loading a transient finite element model with pressure distribution time series gained by wind tunnel tests. Due to the rims, the heliostat shows significantly better dynamic behavior than conventional heliostats without rims.