For all its great insolation, Israel has less than 2 MW of installed PV capacity. Quietly, however, the country is moving toward a decent – albeit limited – PV rooftops program. By William P. Hirshmann

And as Israel dusts off an ambitious target for large-scale solar plants in the Negev desert, the PV amount could even grow. But behind-the-scenes ministerial strife threatens to wipe out PV‘s role in favor of solar thermal. On top of this, a major Israeli scheme for promoting electric cars contains precious few details.

The news was splashed far and wide in the world press – Israel plans to become the first country to promote a major fleet of electric vehicles with batteries charged using renewable energy. As Israeli President Shimon Peres greeted the multi-year commercial scheme called Project Better Place (PBP), the politician didn‘t miss the chance to reiterate his support for large investments in solar power in a Jan. 21 New York Times article. »The Saudis,« he noted, in a tactical jab at Israel‘s oil-rich neighbors, »don‘t control the sun.«

The problem is that neither does Israel. Or at least, it hasn‘t to date. Aside from many rooftop solar-thermal water heaters, it has little else – plans for large-scale solar-thermal trough systems, which have come and gone for nearly a decade, only now look like they might be realized.

As for PV, the situation is even worse. Israel only had about 1.6 MW as of the end of 2007 with just 60 kW connected to the grid. Such numbers are almost embarrassing for a country with enough solar insolation to generate from 1,700 kWh in the Tel Aviv region to as high as 2,200 kWh at its southern tip near Eilat per kW of installed PV capacity. And when it comes to PV manufacturing, while Israel has zero, Saudi Arabia is at least moving toward polysilicon production for PV (see PI 2/2008, p. 8).

As for the 100,000 electric vehicles »tanking up« at 500,000 electrical outlets around the country under the PBP scheme, car owners – who essentially will pay for battery recharging as they would for gas – should be happy to live in a place with so much sun. But aside from some very imprecise references to solar thermal, PBP – lost in the glow of self-congratulatory sentiments of going green – has been very short on details concerning where the electricity would come from. And this could mean continued problems for Israel‘s electricity grid.


 The reason is that in 2007 Israel‘s 10.5 GW of generating capacity came within several hundred megawatts of being overloaded by demand. This is no doubt why Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer of the Ministry for National Infrastructures (MNI), the department in charge of energy, water, electricity, fuel, and soil sciences, has slowly started to rekindle interest in setting up large-scale solar installations for hundreds of megawatts in the Negev desert, a vast area in the south covering more than half of the country. But with most of that installed capacity, if not all, needed for Israel‘s electric car scheme, the danger of brownouts and blackouts may remain.

The complete article is available here

Source:
PHOTON International | William P. Hirshmann 2008