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Solel's energy panels

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28

August 23 • 2007

Israeli firm and PG&E eye solar park
in the California desert.

Tom Tugend
Jewish Telegraphic Agency

Los Angeles

A

call 248.351.5174,

card #

Solar Powered

DETROIT
JEWISH NEWS

iN

n Israeli company will build
what is being called the
world's largest solar energy
park in Southern California's Mojave
Desert.
The $2 billion project will supply
enough electricity to power 400,000
homes in central and northern
California. The Mojave Solar Park is
expected to be completed in 2011.
On July 25, Israel's Solel Solar
Systems and California's Pacific Gas
and Electric public utility signed a
25-year contract. Project leader David
Saul, Solel's chief operating officer,
described the venture as "a landmark"
and "the largest solar project built to
date" in an interview during his brief
visit to San Francisco.
California state agencies must still
approve the solar park, but Pacific
Gas & Electric and Solel spokespeople
said they were confident because state
regulations mandate that at least 20
percent of electricity provided by pub-
lic utilities must be based on renew-
able energy sources, such as solar or
wind, by 2010.
The solar park will stretch over
6,000 acres (nine square miles), use
1.2 million mirrors and 317 miles of
vacuum tubing to harness the power
of the desert sun and deliver 553

megawatts of clean energy.
The American-born Saul, a gradu-
ate of the University of California at
Berkeley, started his career in Silicon
Valley and moved to Israel in 1983. He
said Solel will design and manufacture
the components at its plant in Bet
Shemesh, west of Jerusalem, and will
be responsible for the development
of the park along with a number of
American firms.
Solel's primary development office
will be in Los Angeles. Solel will use its
patented technology in which rows of
trough-like mirrors heat a special fluid
that generates steam, which powers
turbines that generate electricity to be
transmitted to Pacific Gas & Electric's
grid.
The technology was developed by
another Israeli company, Luz, which
built nine solar power plants in the
Mojave Desert between 1984 and 1991.
Luz went bankrupt in the early 1990s,
but the plants are still operational and
recently were upgraded by Solel.
Solel, the world's largest solar ther-
mal company, is also building a large
solar park in southern Spain.
In Israel, the installation of solar
water heating systems on practically
all homes and buildings is mandatory,
but there are no solar parks on a scale
of the Mojave project. Critics in Israel
blame that on bureaucratic roadblocks.
The Israeli government recently
announced plans for a solar plant near
Dimona in the Negev Desert. I