Israel Negev Solar Plants - A Model for Cost-Efficient, Clean Power Production

The Israel Negev solar plants are a chain of solar energy power stations located in the desert region of southern Israel that could supply all of Israel's power needs. In fact, using the incredibly arid environment with very to little overcast or rain of this region, more solar power plants here could provide a worldwide power supply. Here, in the Negev, the world's largest solar energy dish is also located.

While standard solar panels for residences and businesses can be expensive to set-up due to the photovoltaic cells used to collect and convert sunlight into electricity, some Negev giant solar plants are looking into solar cells integrated into thinner sheets developed by Nanosolar. This company is a leading developer of solar power technology based in Palo Alto, CA that is committed to producing low-cost printable solar cells. These thin film solar cells are becoming cheap enough to compete with conventional energy like coal.

The Negev solar plants use large, curved glass mirrors that focus sunlight more intensely onto these cells. This more concentrated sunlight means that each photovoltaic (PV) cell collects sunlight more optimally. As a result, the optimal use of solar cells means more power is generated with less (costly) equipment. Therefore, cutting the cost of solar power equipment makes each solar plant more cost efficient.

A single 1GW solar plant is projected to take up to 5 kilometer squares of space each and cost 1 billion Euros to build. However, it can also produce about 200 million Euros of power every year. Each Israel Negev solar plant can produce 2 Terawatt hours of electricity annually. 2 Terawatt hours are the equivalent of 200 million Euros that each plant produces. This more than meets Israel's increasing power demands. Moreover, the energy produced by five plants will actually pay to build a sixth plant.

Not only can the Israel Negev solar plants meet the growing demands of Israel's power needs in a cost-efficient yet operationally effective way but it also paves the way for future projects to integrate environmentally-friendly and renewable solar power into the national energy needs.