Israel to get first solar thermal project

Israel's National Infrastructures Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer gave the approval to issue a license for the country's first solar thermal plant.

Yavne, Israel-based AORA, a subsidiary of the Edig Group, now plans to commission its 100-kilowatt solar thermal plant and connect it to the grid by the end of March.

The installation uses 30 heliostats to follow the sun and direct its rays to the top of a 30-meter tower housing a solar receiver that heats air to 1,000 degrees Celsius and directs the air to a gas turbine.

Edig received approval from the Public Utility Authority in January but was awaiting the final OK from Ben-Eliezer (see Israel allows first solar power plants). AORA came out of stealth in February with its proprietary technology and the news it raised $5 million from EZKlein Partners and L&Q Solar (see Israeli startup grabs $5M for distributed solar thermal).

The commercial solar thermal gas-turbine power station is under construction at Kibbutz Samar in Israel's southern Arava region. The plant is built with a hybrid system that can run the turbine using natural gas, biogas or biodiesel at night when no solar energy is produced in order to provide a round-the-clock power source.

The license give the company 18 months to build the plant and connect it to the electric grid. The technology was developed at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot and with Rotem Industries.

The country's largest solar installation—just 50-kilowatts—was connected to the grid in December as part of a joint venture of Wuxi, China-based Suntech Power Holdings (NYSE: STP) and Ramat Gan, Israel-based Solarit Doral (see Israel opens largest solar plant with Chinese help). 

The Public Utilities Authority recently agreed to buy electricity at NIS 2.01 ($0.53 USD) per kilowatt hour from individuals and companies installing solar arrays on roofs—four times the going price of electricity for consumers (see Sunday Solar powers Israeli kibbutzim). 

AORA CEO Haim Fried said the current tariff regime in Israel isn't sufficient for solar thermal projects, so the company is also looking to develop solar thermal projects outside Israel.

COO Yuval Susskind told the Cleantech Group in February that the company is targeting an untapped market that's less impacted by the current credit crunch than massive installations.

"The solar industry is segmented into two themes: there's the photovoltaics that you put on homes, and on the other hand there are the huge solar companies out in the desert," Susskind said. "In the middle there's nobody working on providing 100 kilowatts to 5 megawatts of solar thermal and doing it close to people's homes."

Ben-Eliezer also signed a license for Arava Power to build a 4.9-megawatt solar photovoltaic power plant at Kibbutz Ketura in the Arava desert. Arava's project is expected to cost NIS 120 million ($31.2 million). The company planned to begin construction as soon as the license was approved on the 80-dunam (861,000-square-foot) facility.

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