A new kind of solar facility, the first hybrid solar thermal plant, has been developed by AORA, formerly EDIG Solar, and was completed on June 25.
The plant will contain enough capacity to power 70 homes continuously, through the night and cloud cover. Thirty heliostats will track and reflect the sun towards the nearly hundred-foot tall turbine tower, where the concentrated sunlight heats compressed air, which then drives a gas turbine.
Small-scale solar thermal technology was the company’s goal. The Kibbutz Samar station in southern Israel will produce 100 kW of on-demand power and 170 kW of thermal power. Using the gas turbine improves space and energy efficiency, requiring fewer mirrors, saving space when alternatives are taken from the larger standard steam turbine.
AORA’s goal was to bring solar thermal technology down to a small, community-sized scale that could be quickly and less expensively erected. "There is a chasm in the industry — between massive solar thermal [arrays] in the desert and small photovoltaic in the home because there is nothing that satisfies community-sized scale solar," Yuval Susskin, Chief Operations Officer at AORA, said. "No one is working on providing solar power to nearby homes."
"Solar thermal is a great technology for sunny areas, while PV can be more efficient in cloudy climates with indirect sunlight. When PV panels heat up, they lose efficiency, but in places like England, Japan, or Germany, they [flourish]," Susskin added.