Community Solar Comes to Israel with First Hybrid Solar Thermal Power Station

Several weeks ago, Energy Boom reported on the AORA solar installation that was scheduled to go live. Renewable Energy World reports that this first hybrid solar thermal power station has now launched at Kibbutz Samar in the Arava Desert in Israel outside of the resort town of Eilat. As Zaher Karp explains, this is an important evolution for solar:

Since its inception, solar technology development has existed primarily as either photovoltaic, with many small units or residences or commercial buildings, or as large-scale solar thermal.

A new kind of solar facility, the first hybrid solar thermal plant, is being developed by AORA-- more importantly, one that can be easily deployed and efficiently run. - Matter Network

The so-called solar power flower – the tower is shaped like a tulip - is based on technology developed at the Weizmann Institute of Science, combined with Haim Dotan Ltd. Architects design. It consists of a 30 meter (over 98 feet) high tower adjoining a field of mirrors on less than half an acre to form a single power module, capable of generating 100 kilowatts of electric power and 170 kilowatts of thermal power, constantly.

The unique design and bright yellow color was a matter of both form and function. The facility is on a bird migratory route and the smooth shape of the tower keeps birds from landing on it. The yellow allows low flying aircraft from the nearby airforce training facility to see it.

The thirty mirrors, or heliostats, track and reflect the sun towards the top of the tower where there is a solar receiver as well as a 100 kilowatt gas turbine. The concentrated sunlight heats compressed air to 1000 degrees Celsius which then drives the gas turbine and creates electricity. When there isn’t any sun available, the turbine can run on biogas, biodiesel, diesel and natural gas.

The system is also modular making it easy to scale up or down depending on how much energy is needed. The size and scale make it ideal for locally generated power.

"The size and relative price of our solar power system means it can be implemented in local as well as large-area instillations,” said Haim Fried, Aora's CEO. "Today marks the beginning of a new era for solar energy, where any city, town or village can now consider Aora for its energy needs, due to the attainable price point and build-out time of just several months, versus other CSP timelines of several years.” - Renewable Energy World

AORA COO, Yuval Susskind explained to me that this initial unit cost $500,000 ($5000 per kilowatt) to install and is powering around 70 homes. That’s actually a per household cost of just over $7000 for installation, a price they expect to come down as they begin creating these units in greater scale and sourcing local materials and labor.

The system has been under development since 2006, when a pilot unit was constructed and successfully operated in China. In 2007, AORA spun off from parent company E.D.I.G. Construction Management and began plans to construct the Samara facility. Now that it is up and connected to the national grid, they are looking to replicate the project elsewhere.

There are already plans to install the first demonstration unit in Spain. “Following that, we hope to replicate this with several other countries; the U.S., Australia, India, South Africa,” Susskind told me. “This is a technology that is more relevant to sunny areas as opposed to photovoltaics which are better for areas with some clouds. Our technology is perfect for the solar belt; California, Arizona, Australia.”

Susskind likes to call their technology ‘community solar’. “It’s not residential solar, it’s not for the house, it’s for the village,” he explained. “Solar thermal has always been used for huge projects that take up a lot of land. We’ve miniaturized the technology to bring small scale solar thermal.” Small scale, localized solar thermal means that there’s no need for large swaths of land or high voltage power lines to haul the electricity back to the end users. “By being modular and small scale, we’ve parked these puppies right in town and can generate power close to where people live.”