Heliogen

Heliogen focuses on generating electricity and heat using an array of computer-controlled mirrors (heliostats) that collect and concentrate sunlight to generate ultra-high temperatures of around 1,000 °C.

Heliogen offers three solutions: 1) HelioHeat uses the company’s solar concentration technology in heat-intensive industrial applications such as the production of cement, lime, and steel, etc. to reduce the use of fossil fuels to generate heat; 2) HelioPower combines the solar concentration technology with supercritical CO2 turbines to generate electricity to power industrial facilities, data centers, and mining operations; 3) HelioFuel uses the solar concentration technology to produce renewable-hydrogen.

In October 2023, Heliogen achieved several milestones at its Capella Project, the world’s first fully integrated Gen3 Concentrating Solar Power (CSP) commercial demonstration. The company deployed the first commercial-scale centrifugal particle receiver for on-sun testing and has completed the design verification of the prototype particle receiver.

Key customers and partnerships

In March 2022, Heliogen partnered with Woodside Energy to develop a 5 MW concentrated solar demonstration facility in California. The two companies also partnered to market Heliogen’s technology jointly in the US and Australia. The company has also partnered with 1) Hanwha Power Systems; to develop a 5 MW electrical power block integrated with thermal energy storage, and 2) Vacuum Process Engineering and 3) Solex Thermal Science to develop a heat exchanger for its power block at the California demonstration project.

In August 2022, Heliogen partnered with Dimensional Energy, to produce SAF from concentrated sunlight and green hydrogen. In June 2023, Heliogen signed an engineering services agreement with NantG Power to provide the latter with its core intellectual property to develop a pilot solar thermal calcination facility. In January 2024, Heliogen signed a joint development agreement with Omanor, that included the development of a concentrating solar power plant using Heliogen’s technology and Heliogen’s expansion into Mexico.

Funding and financials

In October 2022, Heliogen was awarded USD 4.1 million by the US Department of Energy Solar Energy Technologies Office, to fund a demonstration project to reduce carbon emissions from cement production. Prior to this, in May 2022, Heliogen received USD 50 million from Woodside to develop a concentrated solar demonstration facility. In December 2021, the company received USD 39 million from the US Department of Energy (DOE) to develop a supercritical carbon dioxide (sCO2) power cycle that operates using Heliogen’s concentrated solar thermal energy. In June 2021 Heliogen raised USD 83 million from investors including ArcelorMittal (a Luxembourg-based multinational steel manufacturer), Edison International, Prime Movers Lab, Ocgrow Ventures, A.T. Gekko, and 8090 Partners to accelerate the global deployment of its technology.

In November 2023, Heliogen began trading on the OTCQX Best Market under the ticker symbol “HLGN.” During the same month, the company was suspended from trading on NYSE. This was due to Heliogen falling below the NYSE’s continued listing standard which requires listed companies to maintain an average global market capitalization over a consecutive 30 trading day period of at least USD 15 million.

The company was initially listed on NYSE in December 2021 through a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) merger and received USD 188 million from the transaction.