In Israel, solar power that won’t need subsidies
On Monday, ZenithSolar unveiled a new solar dish that could make the cost of solar energy competitive with fossil fuels.
By Ilene R. Prusher | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor/ April 28, 2009 edition
Kvutzat Yavne, Israel
In a country that ranks among the world’s highest for average number of sunny days per year, solar energy has long been seen as a key natural resource here.
All the more fitting that on the eve of its Independence Day Israel launched what it said was the first solar farm of its kind, billed as a breakthrough that will make it affordable to reduce reliance on fossil fuels.
The technology, a system of rotating dishes made up of mirrors, is capable of harnessing up to 75 percent of incoming sunlight – roughly five times the capacity of traditional solar panels. In addition, using mirrors to reduce the number of photovoltaic cells needed, it makes the cost of solar energy roughly comparable to fossil fuels.
While this technology has been implemented elsewhere, Israeli start-up ZenithSolar – working in conjunction with Israel’s Ben-Gurion University – is a pioneer in combining it with a water-based cooling system that increases the photovoltaic cells’ efficiency and produces thermal energy to boot.
“We’re the first to develop a cogeneration machine which will harness sunlight to produce thermal energy together with electrical energy at the same time,” said Roy Segev, founder and CEO of ZenithSolar, at a launch party Monday at this kibbutz, or communal agricultural settlement, located on Israel’s coastal plain east of Ashdod. This flagship plot of 16 dishes known as “Z20”s – which look like semiflattened satellite dishes with the texture of a disco ball – will generate about half of the total energy needs of this community of some 200 families.
Related story: Click here for a video showing how MIT students concentrated the sun’s rays so intensely that they were able to light a wooden 2-by-4 on fire.
Israel has long sought to make the most of its location: the Negev Desert, not far from here, gets about 330 sunny days in a year. Israel recruited its first solar-energy pioneer in 1949 just after the state was founded, and Israelis have have been using solar panels on their roofs to heat water for decades – more than 1 million households in a nation of 7 million have such setups, according to a recent Business Week report.
In June 2008, the government introduced a feed-in tariff, a program launched with great success in Germany and elsewhere that enables smaller-scale producers of renewables to compete in the energy market.
In 20 years, virtually free electricity?
Only recently has there been a push in Israel to commercialize solar energy. Sollel, another Israeli company that developed a solar-powered turbine, signed a deal in 2007 with Pacific Gas and Electric Company to build what promises to be the world’s largest solar plant in California’s Mojave Desert.
But the idea of affordable solar energy on a mass scale had a place in Professor David Faiman’s heart for decades. Originally from London, “where I was vaguely aware that there was a sun in the sky,” he came to Israel in 1973 as a physicist. Shortly afterward, the oil crisis of the 1970s began.
“I did a lot of soul-searching because of the energy crisis. I thought it was crazy that the whole world should be at the beck and call of a small group of countries that have oil, whereas we all have sun,” he says in an interview in the shade. That swayed him to switch over to Ben-Gurion University’s Jacob Blaustein Institutes for Desert Research, where he is now chairman of the department of Solar Energy and Environmental Physics. Professor Faiman also directs Israel’s National Solar Energy Center.
Faiman’s area of research involves not just harnessing the sun but increasing its intensity. The idea is referred to as CPV – Concentrating Photovoltaics – a technology in which mirrors increase the light incident onto semiconductors, which increases energy output.
“By using mirrors to concentrate the sun’s light, you cut down by 1,000 the amount of photovoltaic material you need, and you’ve essentially opened the door to affordable photovoltaics,” explains the white-bearded professor, a straw hat on his head to protect himself from the afternoon blaze, already strong even on a mild April day. “The beauty of the mirror-based system is that since you have to cool it, you can get 50 percent more energy out of it in the form of hot water.”
He says that after the installation of such a system is paid for – one Z20 would now run about $15,000 a pop – electricity or water-heating costs would be mostly based on maintenance costs, rather than pricey fuel.
“The world is consuming the energy equivalent of 200 million barrels of oil a day,” Faiman says. “If we can reduce that, the environmental footprint will be enormous…. And in 20 years, if we in Israel move in this direction, 60 to 70 percent of our electricity needs will not cost anything, and at that stage, what you pay will be based on the operation and maintenance costs.”
A dig at oil-rich adversaries
ZenithSolar hopes to offer its technology further afield. But can it work everywhere, even in the places without nearly as much sun? Faiman says it can, since the machines track the sun even on a cloudy day, but it might not be cost-effective.
Faiman, who is about to embark on a lecture tour in the US, explains that it would not be worthwhile to open a farm in Illinois or Pennsylvania, he found. But it would work to build one in El Paso, Texas, and then ship the electricity north.
“It turns out that in the case of Texas, it would be thoroughly cost-effective for the amount of sun available there,” he says. “Other states could buy it from Texas and transfer it by cable.”
The very use of the word “farm” to refer to these massive dishes planted in dirt puts a new spin on an old motto about making the desert bloom. As one of Israel’s veteran founders, Israeli President Shimon Peres, spoke at the inaugural ribbon-cutting here, he made a bold prediction that the technology would empower countries that lack oil – Israel among them – and made something of a dig at the countries which have oil.
“Today, terrorism is nourished mainly from those countries that have oil, including Iran,” Mr. Peres said. “Solar energy is democratic and it can change the face of the world.”
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Comments
2. Phil Bechtel | 04.28.09
Marvelous! More, more, more …!!!
Thanks for your efforts and energy bringing this to light,
Phil, BSEE, Powered by Cooking Oil in U.S.
3. Pierre Wong | 04.29.09
We finally have the solution, the ideas were excellent, we now have both electricity; and hot water which have many other uses too.
Thank for publishing and the world should learn from you.
But I have a dream too, to use standard solar panel as permanent roof, produce electricity, hot water in sunny days and produce electricity and warm air when it was not so sunny.
Thanks again.
4. JMC | 04.29.09
Leave it to the Israelis to think up something cool like this. I often disagree with the Israeli govt. in their conflict with the Palestinians, but they have created a relatively free, culturally vibrant, and technologically advanced society there that is the envy of the region. Kudos!
5. Nahum Wengrov, Israel | 04.29.09
Great reporting, CSM staff. Makes me proud to be an Israeli. This is Prophecy being fulfilled before our astonished eyes:
“ …and the light of the sun will be sevenfold, like the light of the Seven Days (of creation), on the day the LORD will dress the fracture of His People and heal its wound and blow ” (Isaiah 30:26)
6. steve friedman | 04.29.09
Oh dear, those evil Israeli’s have gone and done something GOOD for the World (again!), instead of demanding special considerations of the world. Next thing might be that they they find a cure for cancer.
Makes being anti-Semitic even more difficult.
7. Howard Wilshire | 04.29.09
I see from the photograph provided that Israel follows the same scorched earth policy in building solar farms as we do in the U.S.–if there was any functioning ecosystem present before the construction, it is obliterated. And, I note, no mention is made of actual water consumption–for mirror cleaning as well as the cooling required. This not-so-small problem is the wall solar farm schemes in western U.S. is running into
8. Rick Saxton | 04.29.09
Now what we need to do is make an electrical infrastructure that will transport electricity from high sun areas to other places.
9. Solar Panels Sasch | 04.29.09
One of the downsides of solar power concentrator technologies that I have seen over the years as companies come in & out of existence offering such solar technologies is that the actual photovoltaic cell that receives the intense light lasts/lives for a much shorter time than in a traditional solar panel. So while they may use fewer PV (Phovoltaic) cells, I imagine you have to replace them much more often than a traditional solar panel. Perhaps by cooling the cell with water they are able to extend the life of the cell to some amount of time that does indeed make it cost effective.
10. ahhthesmellofit | 04.29.09
Oh baby i can smell the air clearing up as we speak. i can hear the emums coffers going dry.
11. dizizcamron | 04.29.09
@8. Rick Saxton
This technology has existed for about 50 years. its called the power grid. Current high voltage lines can transmit large quantities of electricity hundreds of miles. For example the nuclear power plant in Wheeling WV primarily serves power to the southern portion of New York State.
If you meant that we need to re-invest in this infrastructure and bring it up to our current needs, then I completely agree.
12. frances cook | 04.29.09
If this form of solar power had been in place already, our world could have been more peaceful.
13. Stewmeistr | 04.30.09
With all of the brilliant people in this world and we are just “discovering” that if you concentrate solar energy with mirrors and track the sun vs a stationary/static system, that it is more cost efficient and viable? Wow, no duh!
14. cyrushoda | 04.30.09
israelis always do something awesome scientifically , I mean they invented the camera-pill, which you can take and do a colonoscopy instead of having to have an humiliating camera tube shoved up your ***
15. Jesse | 04.30.09
“Roughly comparable to fossil fuels” — Yeah, I’ll believe it when I see it. That’s been the promise from solar for 30 years and it’s still never come remotely close. But these companies need to stop promising what they can’t deliver. Did anyone see the contract with PG&E in California for space-based solar. Laughable!
16. j f | 05.01.09
FRESNEL LENS, FRESNEL LENS!! - investigate the fierce magnifying power - the sun-concentrating power - of cheap, plastic, FRESNEL LENSES. Big ones are available. Sun magnification devices create high heat. 1) Place a Fresnel lens on a shallow vat of sea-water, at the top of a hill. 2) Make the water boil, using the passive solar power concentrated by the Fresnlel Lens. 3) Using a conventional solar-powered pump, force this steam into an underground pipe. It’s cooler underground!!!! 4) So, the steam condenses once inside the pipe, and fresh water collects at the bottom of the hill. (You forced the sea water up to the top of the hill also using a conventional solar pump.)
We need cmpletely solar-powered water de-salination plants. Don’t worry, the Mediterranean will endlessly refill itself from the Atlantic.
17. jf | 05.01.09
He could COOL it with SEA water, and then cause this now hot sea water to heat even further, to boil - distilling it into fresh water. Desalination
! Materials used would have to be able to resist corrsion, by sea water.
18. Jim | 05.02.09
ZenithSolar’s claim that it is the first to develop a cogenerating solar dish which generates heat and electricity is not correct.
The first prototype of the Australian National University’s Big Dish was able to do this and was first developed in 1994. A second prototype was actually installed at Israel’s Ben-Gurion university by ANU - see http://www.wizardpower.com.au/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=17&Itemid=33
See http://www.sustainability-australia.com.au/energy/dishing-out-new-solar-power/ for more info on the **** Big Dish technology.
19. dc bateman | 05.02.09
Howard, have you ever BEEN to Israel? The place is a reclaimed wasteland. This array is in a pile of sand. It is not Norway. I know , I HAVE been there. Imagine the California desert or Nevada with an ocean view. The land is quite fine, thank you for caring, even if it is misplaced concern.
20. Richard Mercer | 05.03.09
7. Howard
The damage to desert ecosystems from runaway global warming would make the effects from solar farms seem miniscule. Drought lasting 1000 years in the American southwest and up to 30% of global landmass would turn our southwest into a more Sahara like desert. Soil moisture declines of 20 to 5o% Using less than 0.5% of our soutwest deserts would equal the power from all our coal plants, 1% could power the whole country. Solar thermal with heat storage for steady dispatchable power day and night. And CPV concentrating photovoltaic
The water for cooling is the hot water they are providing along with electricity. Hot water for industrial, domestic, agricultural processes, heating and cooling. Solar thermal or concentrating solar power (CSP) can also provide hot water or desalinization. CSP can be air or water cooled.
Read the NREL report on CSP at their website.
21. Richard Mercer | 05.03.09
The comments in the article about Zenith’s systems being effective in El Paso but not Pennsylvania should not be construed to mean solar can’t work in more northern areas. However, both forms of concentrated solar, PV and Thermal are much more effective in high solar radiance areas, like the southwest.
The Desertrec reference above refers to a plan to power Europe, North Africa and the Mid East with solar thermal plants around the Mediterranean. They would also provide hot water and sea water desalinization while producing power. The plan is to build HVDC transmission lines to distribute the electricity. The potential is huge. It’s been said that 1% of the Sahara could power the whole world. desertec.org or trec-uk.org
Look at the page at Desertrec on world CSP potential.
I also highly recommend Climate Progress blog, which has several articles on CSP. This is a great blog, headed by Joseph Romm, physicist and former assistant energy secretary for renewable energy during the Clinton term.
22. Slingshot | 05.05.09
To Jim #18,
Just to let you know - the guy who designed (but never commercialized) the australian system is Zenith’s CTO. and the prof. from ben gurion is Zenith’s co-founder. check out the team section on http://www.zenithsolar.com
23. sunflower | 05.07.09
This technology can be just as cost effective in cloudy climates if the cost is cut in half.
Over the long term, solar energy collectors will cost less with thinking and fossil fuels will cost more with depletion.
24. Dave S. | 05.08.09
Is it just me, or are the shadows on the wrong side of the dishes? I mean, shouldn’t the sun be shining *in* to each parabolic dish?
25. save the deserts! | 05.09.09
Who is he kidding that centralized solar is “democratic” or that we will get power for free? WE will be stuck paying for the initial construction (plus Big Energy profits), then WE will pay for the SF6 spewing powerlines (usually forcing families from their homes) which will counteract any “global warming benefits” for decades, then WE will pay for the power forever, even when it is free to the Big Energy profiteers.
DEMOCRATIC power that WE can actually benefit from will not slaughter over 50 million more acres of intact ecosystems (see the Nature Conservancy’s quote in WaPo a few weeks back, those of you deluding yourselves with tiny numbers), and that will focus on DEMAND REDUCTION and non-lethal energy production within the BUILT ENVIRONMENT. WE will own it and be paid fairly for producing more energy than we use.
Big Centralized Remote Energy Production is a Robber Baron tactic that is NOT needed and NOT wanted. I am sick of these creeps externalizing all their costs onto ratepayers, taxpayers and the planet, and pocketing huge profits. Distributed generation owned by the people is more than enough to fuel our entire nation, per the DOE. 190% of our electricity can be generated on existing rooftops and in-city brownfields using only 10% efficient (super cheap thin film) PV.
PLEASE do not support Big Energy boondoggles that destroy our deserts - which are very much alive! - and rip us off!!! We need loans and feed in tariffs and we will do the rest!!
26. Ronnie | 05.09.09
I’d be interested to know how the concentration of solar energy via mirror is really accomplished. Is there a way that similar concentrations could be used in the aforementioned states where sunlight is not as reliable or plentiful during the year? Or does cost make that a useless effort??
27. Wrong Direction | 05.18.09
Dave S. (24) - I also noted that in photo #1 the dishes are pointed in the wrong direction. They won’t generate any power when pointed that way. I assume they are ‘parked’ that way to avoid generating heat and electricity when in maintenance mode.
28. Jason | 10.23.09
to #4 - Perhaps when the world over starts to appreciate what a wonderful country Israel is, and how Israeli citizens (with government help) are working hard to change the world(biotech,health,solar,internet,cellphones, ect)and especially to create a healthier world through technology,then they will understand that she is a true lover of peace. Israeli/Jewish culture celebrate Life, Freedom, and are healers to the world. but we must also fight against terror on our doorstep. Intelligent people like you should rethink their positions politically and read their history books.
29. Jason | 10.23.09
to #27 - I believe the reason why the dishes are pointed in the wrong direction… is so that you can photograph them. you would not be able to see the details of the dish if the sun were directly on them… additionally, the time of day effects the position, and based on the short shadows I would say we are looking at somewhere not far from midday ; )
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1. ChrisMarks | 04.28.09
I think most people thought/hoped that something like this would come along eventually. The sooner the better. The best phrase in this article was “solar energy is democratic”. Exactly.