Solar power in Israel

Solar power in Israel and the Israeli solar energy industry has a history that dates to the founding of the country. In the 1950s, Levi Yissar developed a solar water heater to help assuage an energy shortage in the new country.[1] By 1967 around one in twenty households heated their water with the sun and 50,000 solar heaters had been sold.[1] With the 1970s oil crisis, Harry Zvi Tabor, the father of Israel's solar industry, developed the prototype solar water heater that is now used in over 90% of Israeli homes.[2] Israeli engineers are on the cutting edge of solar energy technology[3] and its solar companies work on projects around the world.[4]

Israel has embraced solar energy.[3][4] There is no oil on Israeli land and the country's tenuous relations with its oil-rich neighbors made the search for a stable source of energy a national priority.[5][6] Israeli innovation and research has advanced solar technology to a degree that it is almost cost competitive with fossil fuels.[2] Its abundant sun made the country a natural location for the promising technology. The high annual incident solar irradiance in the Negev Desert has spurred an internationally renowned solar research and development industry, with Harry Tabor and David Faiman of the National Solar Energy Center two of its more prominent members.[5] At the end of 2008 a feed-in tariff scheme was approved, which immediately put in motion the building of many residential and commercial solar energy power station projects.

History and development

In 1949 prime minister David Ben-Gurion sent a letter to England to offer Harry Zvi Tabor a job on the 'physics and engineering desk' of the Research Council of Israel, which he accepted. His first task was to create the Israeli National Physical Laboratory to create standards amongst the different measurements in use in the country, primarily British, Ottoman and metric.[6][7] Once the laboratory was established, he first focused on solar energy for research and development.

Solar energy was particularly attractive for two reasons. First, the abundance and strength of the sun's rays on Israeli land. Israel's geographic latitude location is on the 30th parallel north, where the annual incident solar irradiance is 2000 kWh per sq.m.[5] Second, Israeli land lacks oil, and the conflicts with its neighbors made the procurement of a stable source of energy a national priority. In particular, it is argued that the best defense against missile attack felling the national power grid would be to build a distributed power network, which would mean solar fields of 25–50 megawatts across Israel.[8]

Early in the 1950s, Harry Tabor began to examine why solar installations were inefficient. He eventually devised ‘selective black surfaces’, which his team at the National Physical Laboratory modified using nickel and chrome methods to blacken metals. These surfaces became known as Tabor surfaces, which are particularly effective at trapping heat for use in solar water heaters.[9]

Tabor and French immigrant Lucien Bronicki developed a small solar power unit, the Organic Rankine Cycle turbine, for developing countries with problematic power grids.[7][10] It was designed to neutralize the maintenance issues of reciprocating engines so it had only one moving part, the rotor. A 3 kWe prototype was exhibited at the 1961 United Nations Conference on New Sources of Energy in Rome, but it failed to find commercial success.[10]

Solar water heaters

In the 1950s there was a fuel shortage in the new Israeli state, and the government forbid heating water between 10 p.m. and 6 p.m. As the situation worsened, engineer Levi Yissar proposed that instead of building more electrical generators, homes should switch to solar water heaters. He built a prototype in his home, and in 1953 he started NerYah Company, Israel's first commercial manufacturer of solar water heaters.[1] By 1967 around one in twenty households heated their water with the sun and 50,000 solar heaters had been sold.[1] However, cheap oil from Iran and from oil fields captured in the Six Day War made Israeli electricity cheaper and the demand for solar heaters dropped.[11] After the energy crisis in the 1970s, in 1980 the Israeli Knesset passed a law requiring the installation of solar water heaters in all new homes (except high towers with insufficient roof area). As a result, Israel is now the world leader in the use of solar energy per capita (3% of the primary national energy consumption).[12]

As of the early 1990s, all new residential buildings were required by the government to install solar water-heating systems, and Israel's National Infrastructure Ministry estimates solar panels for water-heating already satisfy 4% of the country's total energy demand.[2] Israel and Cyprus are the per capita leaders in the use of solar hot water systems with over 90% of homes using them.[13]

The Ministry of National Infrastructures estimates solar water heating saves Israel two million barrels of oil a year.[10]

Feed-in tariff

On June 2, 2008 the Israeli Public Utility Authority approved a feed-in tariff for solar plants. The tariff is limited to a total installation of 50MW during 7 years, whichever is reached first, with a maximum of 15 kWp installation for residential and a maximum of 50kWp for commercial.[14] Bank Hapoalim offered 10 year loans for the installation of solar panels.[15] The National Infrastructures Ministry announced that it would expand the feed-in tariff scheme to include medium-sized solar-power stations ranging from 50 kilowatts to 5 megawatts. The new tariff scheme caused solar company Sunday Solar Energy to announce that it would invest $133 million to install photovoltaic solar arrays on kibbutzim, which are social communities that divide revenues amongst their members.[16]

Educational and research facilities

National Solar Energy Center
The world's largest solar energy dish is located at the Center.

The National Solar Energy Center was founded in 1987 by the Ministry of National Infrastructures, and is part of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.[17][18] In 2007, David Faiman, the Center's director, announced that the Center had entered into a project with Zenith Solar to create a home solar energy system that uses a 10 square meter reflector dish.[19] In testing, the concentrated solar technology proved to be up to five times more efficient than standard flat photovoltaic silicon panels, which would make it almost as cheap as oil and natural gas. A prototype ready for commercialization achieved a concentration of solar energy that was more than 1,000 times greater than standard flat panels.[2] According to Faiman, who led the Israeli team that developed the technology, 10% of Israel’s population (1,000 megawatts) could live on the energy from 12 square kilometres of land.[20]

Jacob Blaustein Institutes for Desert Research

The Jacob Blaustein Institutes for Desert Research facility was founded by Amos Richmond, and its faculty is part of the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. It has a solar energy research program that have assisted in the development of passive heating, involving how extremes of heat and cold in the desert can be mitigated through efficient storage from day to nighttime. One research project is an inhabited adobe house with rational fenestration. Prisms that absorb heat during the day are situation in the room, and they can be rotated to allow the heat to discharge at night.

There is a double skin greenhouse that uses copper sulfate solution as a heat screen during the day. The liquid is pumped between the two skins, protects the interior from ultraviolet rays and collects heat. At night the liquid is recirculated returning the heat to the greenhouse.

Weizmann Institute Solar Research Facilities Unit

In addition to a solar reactor,[21] the solar research facilities of the Weizmann Institute are among the most advanced laboratories in the world for concentrated solar energy research.[22] They have tested solar technology in the production of hydrogen fuel, which has been successfully trialled on a large scale.[23] Tareq Abu-Hamed, an Israeli scientist at the University of Minnesota, with colleagues Jacob Karni and Michael Epstein, head of the Solar Facility at Weizmann, were the developers of a new method to produce hydrogen fuel more cheaply, efficiently and safely while solving storage and transportation issues.[24]

Other innovations include: harnessing sunlight for space communications and meteorological information; controlling light-dependent chemical reactions; and developing photodynamic cancer therapy.[25]

Solar power stations

The Negev

The Negev Desert and the surrounding area, including the Arava Valley, are the sunniest parts of Israel and little of this land is arable, which is why it has become the center of the Israeli solar industry.[26] David Faiman, a world expert on solar energy, feels the energy needs of Israel's future could be met by building solar energy plants in the Negev. As director of Ben-Gurion National Solar Energy Center, he operates one of the largest solar dishes in the world.[27]

A 250 MW solar park in Ashalim, an area in the northern Negev, was in the planning stages for over five years, but it is not expected to produce power before 2013.[8] In 2008 construction began on three solar power plants near the city; two thermal and one photovoltaic.[28]

The Rotem Industrial Complex outside of Dimona, Israel has dozens of solar mirrors that focus the sun's rays on a tower that in turn heats a water boiler to create steam, turning a turbine to create electricity. Luz II, Ltd. plans to use the solar array to test new technology for the three new solar plants to be built in California for Pacific Gas and Electric Company.[29][30][31]

Farming and kibbutzim

Israel's first solar power station opened in August 2008.[32] Moshe Tenne built the plant on his Negev farm for NIS 1.3 million, and he expects to earn NIS 220,000 a year from selling excess electricity to the national power grid.[32] After the National Infrastructures Ministry announced it would expand its feed-in tariff scheme to include medium-sized solar-power stations ranging from 50 kilowatts to 5 megawatts, Sunday Solar Energy announced that it would invest $133 million in photovoltaic solar arrays for installation on kibbutzim.[16] In December 2008, the Sunday company announced that it would make Kibbutz Reim, in the western Negev, the first community in the world to rely entirely on solar energy.[33] The Reim installation's cost is estimated at NIS60-100 million and will generate at least 2.5 megawatts during peak consumption. Excess energy will be sold to the Israel Electric Company. The investment is expected to pay for itself in 10 years, and the costs and revenues will be divided evenly between the kibbutz and Sunday.[33]

Katsrin

The large Chinese solar company Suntech Power and Israeli company Solarit Doral built Israel's largest solar power station, a 50KW rooftop project in the northern town of Katsrin, and connected it to the electric grid in December 2008.[34][35]

Finance and business

* Arava Power Company is one of Israel's largest solar companies, and in November 2008, it announced that it had entered an agreement for solar fields that will generate at least 500 MW, and eventually one gigawatt (GW), which could have a deep impact on Israel's energy market.[36]
* Israel Cleantech Ventures is a venture capital fund that invests in the Israeli clean technology sector.
* Pythagoras Solar is based in Hakfar Hayarok with an office in San Mateo, California. It works with photovoltaic technology and builds "Medium" concentration solar cells using silicon.[37] Its also seeks ways to reduce the cost of solar panels through software modeling, optical design, materials and mass manufacturing techniques.[38]
* Solel has nine fields of solar collectors in the Mojave Desert of California.[39] It recently signed a contract to build the Mojave Solar Park, which will be the world's largest solar generating plant.[4][40]
* Zenith Solar pioneered a new technology of "concentrated solar power" method that is up to five times more efficient than standard technology, making it almost as cost competitive as traditional fossil fuels.[2]