Israel Sells Solar Abroad as R&D Flourishes
For as long as i can remember (that would be the 1960’s), Israel has taken advantage of the hot, Middle Eastern sun, mainly as a source for making hot water. Since then, Israel has moved from a developing country, focusing in labor intensive industries such as agriculture and industry, to a leading high tech center. Today’s Israel rivals the world in technological industries and economic growth. It receives more U.S. patents (1325 in 2006) than dozens of countries including Belgium, Finland, Spain, Austria, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Singapore, China and Hong Kong. Yet his high tech success, hasn’t really Israeli society to implement a solar generating industry.
Recently the CBC reported on Israeli professor David Faimen and his recent research in solar electric generation. Dr. Faimen has found that by concentrating sunlight onto a standard photovoltiac cell, he has increased output by over 1000 times. Think mirrors and lenses. Currently a US based power plants uses mirrors to concentrate light on tubes that move a thermal liquid which is used to make steam to power the turbines that make electricity.
Rather than using the heat to boil water, they focused on ”… concentrating the light a thousand times, we were able to produce 1,500 watts from a cell that normally gives only one watt,” Faiman explains. If this technology proves affordable, suddenly a home owner could generate the 5 kw needed to power a house from area much smaller than todays panels. In fact Faiman believes that his techonology could generate over 80 Megawatts, per sq kilometer, or enough to power over 16,000 homes.
From The Lab to Production
Not only is Israel involved in photovoltaic research, they’re are actively involved in large scale commercial solar procuction, thru the work of Solel Solar Systems, Ltd. of Bait Shemesh (House of Sun) Israel. Solel is best known for having built the 9 solar fields in Californian, using mirrors to collect solar heat to boil steam for turbines. The company was recently awarded a contract to deliver a 1 million mirror collection facility covering 6000 acres and generating electricity for over 400,000 families.
Strangely enough, there are no such plants in Israel and none are planned. So while the Israeli solar industry is building state of the art plants in the US, they aren’t selling their products at home.