BRAIN WAVES page 63

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products ( 1995 sales totaled $1
million I. He has five registered
patents, none of which have
been commercialized.
Among those advising him is
Russian-born engineering pro-
fessor Boris Trogovnikov, an ex-
pert in hydraulics and physics
who, prior to emigrating in 1991,
conducted research and quality
control for the Central Engi-
neering Institute in Moscow.
Ovadia's bookshelves and
desk literally bulge with files full
of data on wave power installa-
tions and tantalizing corre-
spondence from across the globe.
"If costs and various other eco-
nomic considerations merited
them, such projects would be se-
riously considered for finance in
water-scarce areas where costs
are high," writes Denis Ander-

wants to acquire 25 percent of
SDE. In return, that company,
which Ovadia declines to iden.
tify, wants first rights of refusal
for an initial public offering of
SDE's shares, after the first
commercial model has been con-
structed.
The city of Ashdod is ready to
be the guinea pig for a four-
megawatt prototype on a strip
of coastal land in its jurisdiction.
"Ovadia needs to set up a pi-
lot plant to show it works," says
an Israeli Energy Ministry sci-
entist who has been following
the project. "He has a good in-
ventor's head but no experience
in seeing through a system to
the end."
Ovadia is awaiting approval
for a promised $200,000 devel-
opment grant from the Ministry

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son, senior adviser at the World
Bank's Industry and Energy De-
partment.
Mr. Anderson suggests that
companies such as Ovadia's con-
tinue to identify investment op-
portunities in various countries.
This in turn would draw the
World Bank's or its quasi-private
arm, the International Finance
Corporation's, attention.
Ovadia's company, SDE Sea
Wave Energy and Water De-
salination, has received in-
quiries from as far afield as
Oman, China, Brazil, the Philip-
pines, Austria, Belgium, Kerala
(a strip of land along the sea
coast in south India) and Thai-
land. The Maheshwari Group in
Madras, India, wrote that it was
"highly impressed" with the
technology and had sent the
Tamil Nadu government a pro-
posal for setting up the system
on a joint-venture basis.
Leading
Scottish-based
builder of conventional wave
power machines, Applied Re-
search & Technology, inked a co-
operation agreement with SDE.
Ovadia says major invest-
ment banks, including Lehmann
Brothers, Deutsche Bank and
Merrill Lynch have expressed
their willingness to raise up to
$50 million once the first com-
mercial model is operating. He
is negotiating with an American
investment company which

of Industry and Trade, due "any
day now." This would not be the
end of the obstacle race though.
Israel Lands Authority (ILA),
which owns the potential site
along Ashdod's coast, wants to
sell it to the highest bidder.
Ovadia's company is not the
only Israeli wave power devel-
oper. At the Western Negev Ini-
tiative Center at Neve Dekalim,
in the Israeli-controlled area
within the Gaza Strip, Gal Yam
Energy Ltd. has developed a hy-
draulic, modular system of off-
shore buoys, each able to
generate 200 kilowatts.
Aided by a $300,000 MITI
grant, Gal Yam has built a lab-
oratory wave pool and written
appropriate computer simula-
tion programs. Now it is gearing
up for full-scale sea model ex-
periments. Company officials de-
cline to estimate investment and
production costs, insisting only
that the aim is to be competitive
enough for private producers to
sell the wave energy to electric
utilities.
"Technologically, the Gal Yam
project is at a more advanced
stage than Ovadia's," said an In-
frastructure Ministry spokesper -
son. "Nevertheless, it's difficult
to compare the two, since they
use different technologies and
only SDE's doubles as a desali-
nation plant." 0
(c) Jerusaletn Post 1997