Since its founding, Israel understood the potential of generating power from plentiful sunshine. Its new technologies promise an even brighter future for the entire world.
By Ira Moskowitz
Israel’s solar energy sector is heating up. In the worldwide quest for clean, reliable energy, its best and brightest are finding new ways of harnessing free natural forces – abundant sunlight and winds – capable of generating electric and thermal power.
Plans are in place for projects ranging from huge solar fields producing hundreds of megawatts to grassroots efforts providing a few kilowatts of electricity for off-grid villages. Though solar energy today accounts for a fraction of Israel’s needs, a host of companies stand poised to boost the development of pioneering technology in both solar thermal and photovoltaic systems.
Early developments
Thousands of years after the biblical general Joshua prayed for the sun to stand still long enough to win a critical battle at the dawn of Israeli history, founding Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion recognized that rays from this hot star, "the source of life for every plant and animal, yet a source so little used by mankind," could be "converted into a driving, dynamic and electric force."
In the early 1950s, Ben-Gurion recruited Dr. Harry Tabor from England to join the Research Council of Israel. There, Tabor developed new materials for trapping heat to power solar water heaters. And in 1953, engineer Levi Yissar founded the NerYah company to manufacture solar water systems.
Tabor and French immigrant Lucien Bronicki invented a small solar power unit – the Organic Rankine Cycle turbine – which later formed the basis for Bronicki’s company Ormat, today one of Israel’s leading lights in alternative energy. During the 1970s and 1980s, Ormat operated one of the world’s first solar power stations, located just north of the Dead Sea.
World leader in solar water systems
While Israel continued to rely mainly on fossil fuels, its expertise in the area of solar water heaters mushroomed. By 1967, about five percent of Israeli homes got their hot water from solar-powered rooftop units.
Subsequent legislation requiring the installation of solar panels on new homes has made Israel the world’s leader (together with Cyprus) in per-capita use of solar water systems: About 90 percent of homes are equipped with these systems, which meet about four percent of the country’s total energy demand, saving about two million barrels of oil a year.
One of the pioneering companies in this field, Chromagen, which was founded in 1962, is now exporting its systems to more than 35 countries throughout the world.
Luz lights up California
Luz International, founded by American-Israeli Arnold Goldman, recorded the first major success for Israeli solar technology designed for utility-scale power plants. Starting in 1984, the Luz team developed and built nine solar electricity generating stations (SEGS) in California’s Mojave Desert. This is still the largest solar energy installation in the world.
The nine SEGs utilize a thermal technology using parabolic (reflective) mirrors that focus the sun’s rays on a pipe containing synthetic oil. The oil gets heated to temperatures of more than 750 degrees Fahrenheit. This heat is transferred to water, which produces the steam to drive a turbine engine that generates the electricity.
Despite proving the feasibility of its technology, Luz was unable to sustain its success through periods of low-priced oil and shifting government priorities, and went bankrupt in 1991. Alexis Madrigal, author of the forthcoming book Inventing Green, writes that the demise of Luz left a void in the field of solar thermal electric renewable energy, and "American solar thermal development hibernated even as the plants [Luz] built continued to perform flawlessly."
Solel shines in the ‘House of the Sun’
But Luz wasn’t gone forever. Several members of the team joined forces to set up a new company, Solel, which continued to refine the solar thermal technology developed by its predecessor.
Based in the city of Beit Shemesh, which means "House of the Sun" in Hebrew, Solel became one of the world’s leading suppliers of solar receivers and was ultimately acquired by Siemens for $418 million in 2009. Under the agreement, Siemens agreed to continue Solel’s operations in Israel for at least five years, now under the name Siemens Concentrated Solar Power.
As the market for clean energy began heating up in the late 1990s, Arnold Goldman set out to create a second incarnation of Luz. With some of the key personnel aboard from the earlier company, he pursued a new solar thermal design based on Luz Power Towers (LPT): A field of heliostats (computerized mirrors) track the sun and focus its rays on a boiler mounted atop a 60-meter tower, which directly heats water to temperatures of up to 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit, producing the steam to drive the electricity-generating turbines.
In an interview published in the local press earlier this year, the Rhode Island native explained why he chose to recreate his company in Israel rather than in California: "Israelis are intellectually curious and have experience in so many areas," he said. "That allowed us to put in place a big multidisciplinary conversation and build a learning model based on my specifications in something like six months. It would have taken three or four years in the States. Israelis show incredible dedication and are able to bury their ego in the objective."
In 2006, Jerusalem-based Luz II became a wholly owned subsidiary of the American company BrightSource Energy, and later changed its name to BrightSource Industries (Israel). In order to test its LPT concept, BrightSource built a fully operational solar field in the Negev desert, near Dimona. According to the company’s CEO, John Woolard, the system uses "higher temperature and higher pressure to really push efficiency high, which drives costs down. With the ability to drive costs down, you can compete head to head with fossil fuels."
Back to the Mojave
Nearly 30 years after Luz built its first solar facility in California, BrightSource is about to break ground on another megaproject in the Mojave Desert. The 370-megawatt Ivanpah project received the final regulatory go-ahead in early October and is expected to start producing energy by the end of 2012 and reach full capacity in 2013.
A model rendering of BrightSource Energy’s Ivanpah Solar Power Complex in California
The Ivanpah facility will comprise three solar thermal plants and is expected to cost more than $1.7 billion. The company received a total of $1.37 billion in loan guarantees from the U.S. Department of Energy to facilitate the project financing. According to BrightSource, the fully operational system will reduce carbon dioxide emissions by more than 400,000 tons annually, the equivalent of taking about 70,000 cars off the road.
President Barack Obama singled out BrightSource in his weekly radio address on October 2. "I want to share with you one new development, made possible by the clean energy incentives we have launched. This month, in the Mojave Desert, a company called BrightSource plans to break ground on a revolutionary new type of solar power plant. It’s going to put about a thousand people to work building a state-of-the-art facility. And when it’s complete, it will turn sunlight into the energy that will power up to 140,000 homes – the largest such plant in the world," he told listeners.
While focusing on construction of the Ivanpah plants, BrightSource is also exploring other markets. Speaking at the Reuters Global Climate and Alternative Energy Summit in October, Woolard revealed that BrightSource is already in talks with companies in Australia and South Africa. BrightSource has also entered into a partnership with the French company Alstom to build solar thermal power plants in the Mediterranean region and Africa.
Making the desert bloom – with ‘solar flower’ power
Another Israeli company, AORA, has also developed a solar thermal plant incorporating heliostats and a tower-mounted boiler. The scale of the system is much smaller than the BrightSource LPT array. The tower is only half the height, and only a fraction of the number of heliostats are used to produce a modest total of 100 kilowatts of electricity.
AORA emphasizes, however, that the size of its system is actually an advantage. Its modular units can be deployed individually for distributed generation or combined to create larger-scale power plants. Each unit can be assembled quickly, at a relatively low cost, and requires only a small plot of land.
AORA’s system features a "floral" design, with the boiler housed in a structure that resembles yellow tulip petals. The "solar flower" system is also unique in other ways. First, instead of using a conventional steam turbine to generate electricity, it features a hybrid "solarized gas turbine" – similar to a jet engine – that allows the system to operate on alternative fuels (such as natural gas, biogas and biodiesel) when the sun is not shining.
After building an initial proof-of-concept model in China in the mid-2000s, AORA set up a fully operational system at Kibbutz Samar in southern Israel. According to Yuval Susskind, the company’s COO, the Samar installation was the first commercial solar facility in Israel to feed the electricity it produces into the national grid. "It’s a big deal, just getting certified by the national authorities," he notes.
To Spain and beyond
While continuing to maintain and improve its facility at Kibbutz Samar, AORA is expanding to the Spanish market. It hopes to complete a demonstration unit at Spain’s national solar research center by mid-2011 and has already received orders for more than 80 units.
"Once we achieve certification in Spain, we’re talking about mass production and we begin transitioning from an R&D company to an early revenue company," Susskind explains. In a couple of years, Susskind hopes the company will be ready to tackle the enormous market for rural electrification in India and China.
One potential competitor for AORA is HelioFocus, established in 2007 and based in Nes Ziona. The company, in collaboration with the Weizmann Institute of Science and Ben-Gurion University, is working on a thermal solar system that uses air as the heat transfer element instead of a fluid, and a parabolic reflector dish instead of a field of heliostats. The initial product application is intended to boost existing power stations, the company says.
What about PV?
In addition to the Israeli developments in the solar thermal field, there is also a flurry of activity on the other solar front: photovoltaics, or PV. In PV systems, electricity is directly generated by cells embedded on the solar receivers, in contrast to solar thermal power plants, which use sunlight to produce steam that then generates electricity.
Thanks to attractive feed-in tariffs for small PV installations, dozens of companies are now competing to place imported solar panels on roofs of factories, cowsheds, gas stations and private homes in Israel.
Siemens, which had already acquired Solel, invested $15 million last year to buy a 40 percent stake in Arava Power, a PV-oriented company. Formed in 2006 at Kibbutz Ketura in the Arava region of southern Israel, Arava Power has contracted to build solar generating facilities at a number of sites in Israel, including kibbutzim and Bedouin villages.
Even with this recent increase in PV installations, Israel still produces only a small fraction of its electricity (about 0.4 percent) from renewable energy. But several Israeli companies are developing next-generation PV systems that could help Israel meet its goal of meeting 20 percent of its electricity needs with renewable energy by the year 2020.
MST launches CPV system in Arad
MST is the brainchild of Dov Raviv, who previously spearheaded the development of the Shavit satellite launcher and the Arrow anti-tactical ballistic missile system. The company, based in Rehovot, has developed a concentrated photovoltaic (CPV) system that is twice as efficient in absorbing power from the sun as conventional PV arrays, thus requiring half the space to produce the same amount of electricity.
MST has developed a concentrated photovoltaic system that is twice as efficient in absorbing power from the sun as conventional PV arrays.
The system is also mounted about two meters above the ground, allowing for agricultural or other use of the same land. And instead of conventional silicon cells, the MST system incorporates multi-junction solar cells similar to those deployed on space vehicles. The company has also developed a state-of-the art tracking system to help further boost efficiency.
In October, MST officially connected a 50-kilowatt system to the national electricity grid in the city of Arad. At the ribbon-cutting ceremony, Raviv noted that the system incorporates many other homegrown (and job-creating) technologies and services.
At a ribbon-cutting ceremony in October, MST officially
connected a 50-kilowatt system to the national electricity grid
in the city of Arad.
"MST integrated in its system the inverter technological and sophisticated power optimizer of the Israeli company SolarEdge and, in total, about 280 Israeli contractors and suppliers participated in the process of developing and manufacturing the system," he said. "This demonstrates the potential and power of Israeli solar technology as a growth engine for the Israeli economy."
During the coming year, MST expects to launch a production line in northern Israel that will create 300 jobs and annually produce systems with a total peak capacity of 75 megawatts, thus making it the world’s largest supplier of CPV systems. The company plans to target both domestic and international markets.
ZenithSolar develops cogeneration CPV system
In April 2009, ZenithSolar inaugurated a CPV system that generates both electricity and hot water at Kvutzat Yavne, a kibbutz in central Israel. This pilot project, sited in the kibbutz vineyard, includes 32 CPV dishes, each incorporating about 1,200 small mirrors. This "solar farm" has recently been upgraded to cogenerate a total of 250 kilowatts at peak production.
The system is based on technology developed by Prof. David Faiman, the head of Israel’s National Solar Energy Research Center in Sde Boker, in collaboration with Germany’s Fraunhofer Gesellschaft for Solar Energy Systems.
Prof David Faiman, head of Israel’s National Solar Energy Research Center in Sde Boker, developed the technology behind ZenithSolar. (Photo courtesy Ben Gurion University)
"The idea is to replace large areas of PV panels with large areas of cheap glass and concentrate the light onto a very small amount of PV material," Faiman explained at the system launch. "By concentrating solar energy to a level 1,000 times more intense than natural sunlight and taking advantage of the higher efficiencies at which solar cells operate under these conditions, only minute amounts of expensive PV material are necessary to produce large amounts of power."
Like the MST system, ZenithSolar employs multi-junction solar cells and an advanced tracking system to optimize overall system efficiency; the water used to cool the solar cells exploits this heat to provide the thermal energy that gives the company’s product its added value.
Roy Segev, ZenithSolar’s co-founder and CEO, is a Luz veteran who is determined to offer green solar energy that is price-competitive with conventional fossil fuel systems and is not dependent on government subsidies. The company designed a system that is particularly suited for distributed deployment and is targeting customers who require both electricity and hot water. ZenithSolar’s goal, Segev says, is to turn "households, hotels and factories" into net producers of electricity and thermal heat.
Prof. Ezri Tarazi of the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design – another former member of the Luz team – is responsible for the aesthetic look of ZenithSolar’s system. Tarazi says that he aimed to minimize the impact on the landscape so that the system could also be deployed in urban settings. The design has won international recognition and is currently on display at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in New York City.
A marriage of sun and water
While several Israeli companies offer solutions to make solar energy production less land-intensive, Solaris Synergy offers a novel way to produce solar energy without the need for any land at all. The company’s floating CPV system can be deployed on any fresh-, salt- or waste-water surface. It features a modular design that supports power production ranging from several kilowatts to dozens of megawatts.
The system’s patented cooling technology keeps silicon PV elements at a low and stable temperature, enhancing their efficiency and extending their lifespan. As the company’s name suggests, its solar-on-water system also creates synergy between energy and water production by serving as a breathable reservoir cover that significantly reduces both evaporation and algae growth in the water resource.
In addition to the pool-installed demonstration system on the roof of the company’s headquarters in Jerusalem, Solaris is about to set up a unit at the Renewable Energy Verification Center at Kibbutz Ketura in the Arava. Next year, the company expects to begin installing 50-kilowatt pilot units in Israel and in France under agreements with the Mekorot Water Company and the French electric company (EDF), respectively.
Optimizers, solar windows and more
In addition to the Israeli companies offering complete solar power plant solutions, many others are focusing on specific aspects of solar power.
Tigo Energy, a joint U.S.-Israeli company with engineering operations in Kfar Sava, and SolarEdge, based in Hod Hasharon, have both developed technology that optimizes the efficiency of PV arrays and enhances module-level monitoring capabilities. Tigo Energy was recently named as a "Global Cleantech 100" company for the second consecutive year (as was BrightSource), while SolarEdge has won similar recognition by the Red Herring Magazine and the International Business Awards.
Pythagoras Solar has developed a PV "solar window" that generates electricity for "green" buildings, while reducing heating/cooling and lighting costs. The company’s initial product is designed for use in walls and skylights, but colored roof tiles and other applications are also planned. Pythagoras’ R&D center is in Petah Tikva.
Pythagoras Solar has commercialized the industry’s first energy
efficient high power density photovoltaic glass unit.
3gSolar is developing dye solar cells ("artificial photosynthesis") as a cost-effective alternative to silicon and thin-film PV systems, while GreenSun Energy has developed high-efficiency PV panels that utilize diffused light instead of direct sunlight, thus providing more hours of production and eliminating the need for a tracking system. Both of these solar energy startups are based in Jerusalem.
As countries across the globe scramble to generate cleaner, cheaper and sustainable power, industry leaders worldwide are looking increasingly toward Israel to offer a (solar-powered) "light unto the nations."