The California government may have to look as far away as Israel to solve its energy problems.
An affordable end to the ongoing crisis could lie with the National Solar Energy Center at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, according to its director, David Faiman.
Faiman discussed a potential solution to California’s woes with Gov. Gray Davis’ senior energy adviser David Freeman during a meeting in Sacramento last week.
According to Faiman, the center, housed on the S’de Boker campus of the Jacob Blaustein Institute for Desert Research at Ben-Gurion, is home to “the biggest solar dish in the world.”
If mass-produced, each 400-square-meter (440-square-yard) umbrella-shaped dish of mirrors — which concentrates the light it collects onto a small area of silicon wafers called solar cells — could produce 100 kilowatts of power at an uncharacteristically low cost, competitive with that of fossil fuel.
This is “a breakthrough,” for solar energy or photovoltaic (pv) power, said Faiman. Although solar dishes have been around for a while, what makes the Ben-Gurion system different is its large-scale capabilities and low cost. “You have unique economics that you don’t have with any other system out there,” he added.
He cited a cost of less than $1 a watt for his system versus $5 a watt for conventional pv systems.
The Ben-Gurion dish system is modular, in contrast to conventional pv systems — such as the big mirror systems currently producing grid electricity at Kramer Junction and Harper Lake in California’s Mojave Desert — which are sold only in bulk, to cover areas of many square miles.
The Ben-Gurion dishes, on the other hand, could be used singly or in multiples to power areas ranging from a neighborhood to an entire state. Once the solar energy is converted into electricity, it could be fed into the national power grid.
“For California we could build a 30 megawatt power station made up of 320 dishes,” he said. “If we used these throughout the deserts of the United States, we could power the entire country.”
Additionally, the solar cells on conventional pv systems are the same size as the unit itself. When the solar cell breaks, the whole system is wiped out.
With the Ben-Gurion system, on the other hand, the solar cells are much smaller than the dish. If they break, or an advancement in solar cell technology occurs, “all we have to do is change this one square meter of solar cells, and it’s trivial in cost — only about $100,” Faiman said.
However, right now the Ben-Gurion dish is only a prototype. It cannot be put into action until the university finds a partner willing to invest $1 million for further testing and eventually implement it.
Because of the current conflict in the Middle East, “the government of Israel is very far from thinking about energy problems,” Faiman said. That’s why the center is looking elsewhere.
California, with climate zones similar to Israel’s and an appreciation for “the pioneering use of alternative energies,” seemed the perfect fit, Faiman said.
During a meeting on Aug. 9, he presented his proposal to Freeman.
Freeman did not return phone calls by press time, but Daphna Noily, the Northwest regional director of American Associates of Ben-Gurion, the fund-raising arm, called the meeting “positive yet not conclusive.”
Representatives from the state “were intrigued, but in the short term, they are looking for immediate solutions,” said Noily. “Once the crisis is behind them, they hope to look for more long-term solutions, including solar energy. They asked to have copies of [Faiman’s] documents to give to their researchers.”
In the meantime, Ben-Gurion will pursue other avenues, including the U.S. government, because of the “enormous benefits the dish could provide,” said Noily.
The wider-scale use of solar energy “is not a revolution,” said Faiman. “It fits beautifully into how we do things, but it won’t make waves. It will simply permeate society.”
Its permeation, however, is becoming more and more necessary because of the increasing negative effects of pollutants on health, particularly in the area of energy production.
“Humanity is choking to death,” he said. “Cancer, lung disease, blood disease are all things we are getting back from the environment [because of] what we’ve put into the environment starting with the Industrial Revolution.”
Solar energy, on the other hand, is completely benign and completely natural. The Earth, said Faiman, “was designed to be operated by solar energy. It converts the photons normally used to heat the Earth into electricity, which is ultimately converted back into heat.”
Although Faiman envisions solar energy becoming economically competitive with fossil fuels, he does not think it will replace gas entirely. Because solar power can only be collected in daylight, fossil fuel, he said, will have to be maintained for nighttime energy.
“The gas lobby would not be put out of business. Existing fossil fuel plants would continue to operate. We just wouldn’t have to build more.”
The National Solar Energy Center, which started out as a solar energy think tank in 1976, became a part of Ben-Gurion University in July 1991. It has a staff of about 10.
While Faiman considers the big dish to be the “most exciting” project of the center, it is not the only one. The staff, for instance, is currently trying to build low-cost, high-efficiency solar cells using carbon rather than silicon.
Ben-Gurion also does outreach work with its Palestinian and Bedouin neighbors. To help a diabetic Bedouin child, for example, the center designed a refrigerator powered by solar cells during the day and windmills during the night, to keep his insulin cold.