After a very slow start in solar energy production, Israel is finally beginning to join her Arab neighbors fast-forwarding into a solar future, like the Saudis’ $109 Billion Solar Plan to Power a Third of Saudi Arabia.

Arava Power Company, Israel’s only solar developer to make any headway against the entrenched bureaucratic resistance, now has financing and power agreements for eight solar power projects totaling 58.5 MW, valued at (a comparatively high by U.S. standards) $204 million.

In March, the company was given the go ahead by the country’s Public Utility Authority (PUA) to install a 40 MW project, once it got funding from the Obama administration in February.

(Related: Arava’s 40 MW Solar to Power a Third of Touristy Eliat’s Peak Power.)

But the only project to be approved prior to that was (again, Arava’s) small 5 MW installation that we covered in Bedouin Solar Power Activate! Even that tiny project faced months of bureaucratic battles.

Arava plans to ultimately build 400 MW of solar projects, which would quadruple Israel’s current solar capacity of 140 MW.

The reason for the sluggardly growth is its very unambitious clean energy legislation, which seems inexplicable in a land simply brimming with the sort of engineering genius in its “Silicon Wadi” that should have catapulted the country to Middle East dominance in clean energy.

(Related: Chamelic Invents Answer for Desert Solar & Dust! )

It was the Israeli engineers at Luz for example that virtually invented the entire solar thermal industry that has gone overseas. BrightSource Offers World’s Biggest Solar Storage Deal.

Despite all that talent, for example, Arava’s 58.5 MW solar project is to be built by Germany’s energy powerhouse Siemens. The financing is from French and Israeli banking interests, France’s Electricite de France, the Israeli branch of France’s EDF, the Israeli energy investment bank Noy Fund and financiers Migdal Insurance Company, its largest bank, Hapoalim, and Amitim, which funds diaspora projects.

The funding came once a provisional license from the Public Utilities Authority was granted and an agreement to buy the power was signed with the Israel Electric Company.

Although Israel has introduced a feed-in tariff, which includes  projects up to 5 MW, the rates offered are so low as to provide no incentive to solar developers. And it has introduced a 10 percent renewable target (by 2020), but there is really no policy mechanism to get there, and no punishment for failure to.

The right wing government that has dominated Israeli politics has retarded the growth of renewables energy in favor of chasing the vanishing mirage of fossil energy.

(Related: Has Israel Become a Petrostate?)
But natural gas is proving to be a volatile misstress. Electricity prices are set to jump 9 percent this year.

A few months ago,  the Public Utility Authority suddenly approved nine licenses in a month totaling 385 MW of utility scale PV, and another 50 small PV installations totaling 116 MW. With these, including the Arava licenses, now approved, things are starting to look up.

Read more on Israel solar:

Could Israel Join With its Arab Neighbors in Medgrid?
Egypt Now Contracting a Whopping 1,000 MW Wind Farm!
Solar Power to Pay off Greek Debt?

Qatar is the latest of the oil-rich Middle East/North African (MENA) nations to make bold solar plans to trap a world-record insolation to supply energy for its rapidly growing economy – one that bolted an incredible 20 percent last year.

This week a senior official of Qatar Electricity and Water Company (QEWC) announced the replacement of over 10 percent of its conventional forms of energy used to produce electricity and water with solar power by 2018.

With an incredible daily supply of 16 hours of solar insolation, Qatar has the chance to build a solar-based electricity supply which is far more efficient than any other part of the world.

“Countries that have opted and developed solar energy have benefited a lot. Presently we are planning to replace 10 percent of total energy used for electricity generation and water desalination with solar power by 2018″, General Manager of QEWC Fahad Hamad Al Mohannadi told a news conference attended by the Federation of Arab News Agencies.

He added that the future is full of challenges as we will require more and more energy in the years to come; so with the passage of time as a result of scientific advancement and availability of cost effective technologies, solar power will provide a viable alternative source of energy.

QEWC is serious about local solar power production. It has just signed a memorandum of understanding to cooperate with Qatar-based Qatar Solar Technologies (QSTec) to advance solar power in the region.

Last December QSTec was awarded the New Economy Magazine’s Clean Tech and New Energy Award for Best Joint Venture (Middle East/Africa). Its $1 billion polysilicon manufacturing plant, located in Ras Laffan Industrial City, will initially produce 8,000 metric tonnes of polysilicon in 2013.

Polysilicon is the raw material for solar panel production, and it is refined from sand in a complex high tech processing facility. The company acquired the advanced second generation technology for solar grade polysilicon production from Centrotherm Photovoltaics of Germany.

QSTec has signed a memorandum of understanding to assist QEWC in helping it meet the goal to supply 10 percent of the kingdom’s energy demand from solar, although it is not clear from the press release just how the two will make solar panels from the polysilicon, since neither are in the solar panel manufacturing business.

But German solar energy module manufacturer SolarWorld holds a one third stake in QSTec and no doubt expects to source polysilicon for its German solar module manufacturing from the deal.

But like Saudi Arabia, which recently startled the world with an unprecedented and extraordinarily ambitious solar goal, Qatar seems to hope to handle the production and manufacturing side of the goal at home. Saudi Arabia too has begun the refining of polysilicon from its abundant sands.

For both countries, polysilicon manufacturing is a brand new industry. The resolve with which these two sand-and-sun-rich middle eastern countries have embraced the new industry bodes very well for a clean energy future.

Read more on solar Middle East:

Interview: SolarReserve For the MENA Region?
Saudis Could Export Solar for the Next Twenty Centuries
Solar to Light Our Nights Gets Hotter

Image: douglas knight /Shutterstock

Big Solar drives a wedge between the need to abate climate change and end poverty, says The World Development Movement.

Claiming the the World Bank’s Clean Technology Fund is supposed to be used to alleviate poverty, a British group is objecting to the use of World Bank funds in Morocco to deploy a Desertec solar project in Morocco that will export power to Europe.

The Moroccan Agency for Solar Energy (MASEN) is expected to award the contract for the first phase of the 500 MW Ouarzazate solar project within weeks to one of three energy developers from outside Morocco.

MASEN intends to develop four 500 MW solar projects by 2020, which would allow it to source nearly half of its electricity from renewables, as well as become a net exporter of energy to Europe thanks to its interconnector stretching to Spain. In anticipation of becoming a renewables powerhouse, Morocco doubled the capacity of the interconnector to 400MW in 2007.

After accepting bids from 200 companies, Spain’s Abesinsa ICI  Abengoa’s industrial engineering and construction unit, Italy’s Enel SpA  and Saudi-owned ACWA Power International are in the lead to develop the project. While Abengoa has developed projects like this before, Enel has only 230 MW in solar development.

Major industrial giants like Siemens, Mitsubishi, Daewoo, Lockheed Martin and Sener were shut out.

The World Development Movement claims that using Clean Technology Fund money for the solar project would be a misuse of funds, as it claims that the program is intended partly to reduce poverty, and ”to prioritise projects that tackle poverty and aid transition to a low carbon economy, instead of subsidising multinational companies.”

But the objective of the Clean Technology Fund is to invest in clean energy projects in developing nations to cut greenhouse gas emissions of the recipient country over the long term, according to WRI.

As solar projects go mainstream, they are increasingly developed by very large engineering firms. Saudi  Arabia has a $109 billion solar plan to power one third of its country, for example. This will not be developed by small companies.

According to the World Bank [PDF] the bids must support local manufacturers within a regulatory framework that requires investment locally, where bids must specify local content clauses, including technical education and R&d.

Morocco is ideally situated for hosting this giant solar project for the Desertec plan to power Europe from the Sahara, because it has the solar insolation, the strong government support and existing grid connections with ALgeria and Spain.

But another key reason that the World Bank selected Morocco for funding was the existence of a local manufacturing base with already existing industries, with the ability to supply the project from the most basic raw materials through to the final metal structures, electric and electronic equipment.

As the North African deserts becomes a hub for CSP solar power, driven by Desertec, it will increasingly develop and hone an expertise in solar project development that will add jobs as a thriving clean technology sector develops in the region.

It would be a pity if changing the emphasis to poverty reduction within the Clean Technology Fund program led to weakening its far more far-reaching good it can do in reducing greenhouse gas emissions by helping the developing world hurdle the pollutants that threaten us all, and most particularly, the poor, by developing a solar power industry supply chain in Morocco.

Related:
Morocco to Build Cars in Zero Carbon Factory
Interview: SolarReserve For the MENA Region?
Egypt to Test Unique CSP Solar/Biomass Hybrid Plant

Image of solar thermal from Abengoa

A consortium of European governments, universities and research institutions are funding an innovative solar/biomass hybrid power plant test, coordinated by Italy’s national energy agency, ENEA. The EU is funding the pilot Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) project in Egypt with 11,755,049 Euros, through the EU Seventh Framework Programme.

The project will test units that can produce electricity from two renewable sources. The solar energy is to come from a concentrating solar power technology using molten salts as the heat transfer fluid, the same way that Masdar’s Gemasolar plant in Spain works, in the first 24-hour solar power plant in the world.

(Related: Masdar Opens First Baseload Solar in Spain – Gemasolar)

The CSP technology to be used in the pilot was developed and improved on by Italy’s ENEA; a solar thermal technology based on molten salts as the heat transfer fluid, able to deliver temperatures up to 550 ° C.

This uses mirrors to focus sunlight to heat up the molten salts, and these molten salts then both store and supply the heat needed to produce electricity in the same way that traditional thermal (coal, gas, or biomass) plants operate – on steam driven turbines.

Interestingly, this pilot project will also run on biomass at night, which is burned in the thermal power plant, making this a novel hybrid of two renewable forms of electricity.

(Related: Morocco to Pioneer 1 GW Hydro-Wind Hybrid Power)

While solar thermal CSP is particularly well suited to hybrid combos with the other thermal sources of energy in the back end, it has been only paired till now with fossil thermal energy sources to this point, piggybacked onto a coal plant, or – as at Kuraymat (photographed by our own Tafline Laylin) on a natural gas plant.

This one will be paired with steam supplied by burning waste biomass, biogas, or industrial residues, making this a renewable/renewable hybrid. This technology allows combined heat and power production from solar power that is integrated with other renewable fuels, such as biomass, biogas, industrial residues.

Towards the end of the four year project, an experimental demonstration plant will be built at the Campus of the City University of Science and Technology of Borg-el-Arab, near Alexandria, Egypt. This plant will co-generate 1 MW of electricity and 4 MW of thermal energy to power air conditioning equipment for buildings as well as a small desalination unit, that can supply 250 cubic meters of water per day .

The pilot project is small, and hopes to produce some results that would lead to it being utilized in small or medium size power plants which could be placed close to the need for the desalination, and electricity supply.

It is intended as a model to supply local power and heat needs, and one that is easily able to accept a back-up renewable energy fuel (the biomass, biogas, or waste) of whichever sort is locally abundant. By pairing the solar with the biomass, the expectation is that a 24 hour electricity supply can be produced.

Because the MENA region is a rich source of the solar radiation that is ideal for CSP, its success could lead to wide scale adoption in this region and others that are similarly underserved with electricity, while being “over-served” with the solar potential to supply it.

Egypt in particular, and many other countries in the MENA region have a demand for electricity that is growing at some of the fastest rates in the world. The region is to varying extents dependent on desalination for water supplies. McKinsey has predicted that by 2030 water consumption will increase by 40 percent.

Read more on Middle East solar power:
Middle Eastern Oil Companies Try Solar CSP to Boost Oil Production
Interview: SolarReserve For the MENA Region?
$109 Billion Solar Plan to Power a Third of Saudi Arabia

Above image by Christopher Kraemer

To put 41 GW in perspective, China is the world’s leader in wind power now, overtaking Germany and the U.S. with  about 48 GW of wind. This is a very serious move by a country well able to afford this kind of investment, that till recently has lagged the rest of the MENA region in renewables trailing Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria and the United Arab Emirates.

Traditional photovoltaic (PV) solar is to supply 16 GW, but the bulk of the solar (25 GW) is to come from the very desert-friendly concentrated solar power (CSP) that focuses the sun with mirrors to create the intense heat that drives turbines in a thermal power plant.

Citing government officials, Deutsche Bank said the capacity would be added in competitive bidding starting with 1,100 megawatts of PV and 900 megawatts of solar thermal in the first quarter of 2013. A second round of bidding is due in the second half of 2014.

Solar Reserve, which is constructing the largest 24 hour solar CSP project worldwide in Nevada has already been in talks with the Saudis.

Kevin Smith the CEO of Solar Reserve told GreenProphet that the company is among those looking to bid. The CSP company uses similar technology to the Gemasolar project built in Spain by Abu Dhabi’s visionary state-funded clean energy company Masdar. Because both use molten salt as both the transfer liquid and the storage medium, they can supply electricity long after dark.

“They really only – in the last couple of years – have started to really increase their solar activity” he said of Saudi solar ambitions. “We expect there will be projects going into construction in Saudi next year. Hopefully with us, but certainly, with someone. We expect that their program will kick off next year. We hope we get can projects in construction in 2013.”

The Saudis could potentially save 523,000 barrels of oil equivalent a day over the next 20 years by such a boost to renewable energy, according to Saudi officials.

“The difficulties the Saudis have is their economy is all oil based” Smith concurred. “Really they want to maximise their exports of oil, but really what they’re using a lot of their oil for power generation in the country. It’s fine if oil is $20 a barrel, but now that they can sell it for $100 plus a barrel, it’s not a very cost-effective use of their oil.”

Nuclear, wind and geothermal would together contribute just half that amount at a still staggering 21,000 megawatts (21 GW) as we covered here: Solar-Rich Saudis Running after Nukes. But the new solar plans dwarf these. As they should.

“We are not only looking for building solar plants,” al- Odan said in an interview in Riyadh yesterday. “We want to run a sustainable solar energy sector that will become a driver for the domestic energy for years to come.”

The Saudis may require bid winners to supply from factories built in the nation, according to Vishal Shah, an analyst at Deutsche Bank AG in New York, as we have covered previously: Saudis to Make Desert Sands into Solar Polysilicon.

About $82 billion will go to capital costs, with the remainder of the $109 billion going to train the Saudis to run the solar plants as well as for maintenance and operation, al-Odan told Bloomberg.

Once the strategy, which includes new regulations and financial incentives for private investors, is approved “we will start implementation directly,” al-Odan said.

Saudi Arabia may burn 850 million barrels of oil a year, or 30 percent of its crude output, to generate electricity by 2030 if doesn’t become efficient in energy consumption, Electricity & Co-Generation Regulatory Authority Governor Abdullah Al-Shehri said in a presentation in Riyadh May 8.

Its plans are likely to be approved later this year, al-Suliman said, according to a copy of the presentation he gave on May 8.

“The Saudi Arabian government has a powerful incentive to diversify its energy mix to reduce dependence on oil,” said Logan Goldie-Scot, an analyst at New Energy Finance in London.

Assuming initial capital costs for the solar projects of about $2.17 per watt of capacity installed, he added “The state could generate an internal rate of return of approximately 12 percent if it built a PV plant and sold the displaced oil on the international markets.”

Read more on Middle East solar energy: 

Interview: SolarReserve For the MENA Region?
Saudis Could Export Solar for the Next Twenty Centuries
Solar to Light Our Nights Gets Hotter

Here’s another futuristic invention that could completely change the future of agriculture in a desertifying world. Substituting an industrially produced hydrogel for soil makes it possible to farm on sterile desert sand. Similarly to Pink LEDs Grow Future Food with 90% Less Water, this amazing sci fi technology allows the farming of the desert, with 80 percent less water than needed in traditional farming.

The hydrogel technology is the invention of Waseda University Visiting Professor Yuichi Mori, who has years of experience in developing polymeric membranes for use in medical technologies such as blood purification and oxygen enrichment.

But Mori saw the greatest need was in desert farming in a future world faced with explosive population growth, but diminishing potential for traditional soil-based agriculture due to soil degradation, erosion, and drought.

His hydrogel membrane–based plant cultivation technology has a unique membrane technology [PDF]. The simple system is much more portable than traditional hydroponics.

Mori has launched a company, Mebiol, to commercialize the technology, which solves many of the farming problems found in deserts, the age-old agricultural problems due to the unpredictability of water supplies.

The plants grow on a thin hydrophilic film made of hydrogel, which allows the passage of water and nutrients such as various ions, amino acids and sugars but not bacteria, fungi and viruses. This protects plants from diseases; use of pesticide is minimized.

The membrane looks like a plastic sheet allows for no-soil and low-soil farming, with the water and fertilizer separate from the plants roots. The roots remain dry while drawing water and nutrients from below the membrane, and oxygen from the air. Lettuce and other leaf vegetables can be grown with no soil.

Hydrogels are networks of hydrophilic (which means “water-loving”) polymer chains, sometimes found as a colloidal gel in which water is the dispersion medium. The hydrogel membrane in the Imec technology is only microns thick.

Mebiol is the first and only company globally to have commercialized this kind of membrane for plant cultivation. Advanced membrane technologies are used in the medical and water purification field, but not in agriculture.

Other formulations of hydrogels have uses in medical treatment for blood purification and oxygen enrichment, and in water treatment for desalination and purification.

In agriculture use, along with eliminating the soil contamination that affects productivity and the quality of crops, one of the interesting side effects is that the plants synthesize a lot of sugar. The “water stress” the Imec membrane creates induces crops like tomatoes to synthesize large amounts of sugar, lycopene and other beneficial elements, leading to greater sweetness and higher nutritional value.

After testing the technology successfully in Dubai, one of the world’s most inhospitable environments for agriculture, the Sahara could be next.

And once he makes the desert bloom, Dr Mori believes that even less likely conditions could be roped in for producing crops for a rapidly growing world population.

The technology will even allow cultivation on ice – or concrete!

Read more on growing in desert climates:

According to the always inquisitive Katie Fehrenbacher  over at GigaOm who managed to snag a Q&A with the company, BrightSource just doesn’t necessarily need the extra money right now. Its Ivanpah solar thermal project is already fully funded with project financing from NRG Energy and Google.

(Related: Israel’s BrightSource Still Private After IPO Withdrawal.)

Any additional funds from an IPO at this point would just have gone toward things like continued research and development, project development (other ongoing permitting work) and international expansion. And with market conditions as they are a quick cost/benefit analysis in the last days found an IPO not needed.

According to the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) data, BrightSource has 13 of its huge utility scale solar thermal projects that will be shipping electrons to the California grid between 2013 and 2017 – that are now going the permitting stage.

The Israeli-birthed (Luz Rises Again as BrightSource) U.S. company is the leader of the pack with projects that will clean the U.S. grid for decades into the future, based on the original projects invented by Israeli engineers that still operate in the California desert – even though the U.S. government drove the original Luz  into bankruptcy with the unstable renewable policies of the Carter-Reagan transition.

Since every last one of these BrightSource solar thermal projects already has a Power Purchase Contract (PPA) with the California utilities for the next 20 to 25 years, (and thus certain and long term bankability) the need for additional funding in an IPO is not so great that they were willing to go for it in a down market.

The IPO was cancelled from a position of strength.

“During our IPO marketing, we did experience significant interest from potential investors in the US and internationally” Keely Wachs, senior director of corporate communications wrote to Greenprophet in an email. “We’re also seeing significant demand for our technology in international markets in addition to the strong reception received domestically over the past six years.”

So do not be alarmed next time you read news like this: news like this is not The End of Solar! As Fehrenbacher shows, the truth is simpler. Even when Solyndra actually filed for bankruptcy it was not The End of Solar! So next time you read of how any one company’s bankruptcy – or setback – or minor revised footstep – Means The End of Solar! just remember how when Netscape went bankrupt – that was the end of the internet!

Read more on BightSource:

The CEO of Renault–Nissan alliance Carlos Ghosn and Moroccan King Mohammed VI inaugerated French automaker’s one-billion-euro plant in Tangier which is set to boost Morocco’s automobile industry.The plant will build several new ‘low cost’ vehicles with an annual capacity that could reach ups 400,000 units.

Morocco has only one car plant in Casablanca and seeks to develop its car industry further with Renault Group which will be exempt from both corporate and export taxes for five years.

The 300-hectare plant, which is located 30 kilometres from the new Tanger Med port and only few kilometres away from the Spanish coast, will reach a production capacity of up to 170,000 vehicles per year at first. This capacity is then set to rise to 340,000 units in 2013 or 400,000 units if the plant operates in weekends.

The plant will start assembling two new models. The first is the Lodgy family car which will be sold in Europe under the Dacia name starting in June and a utility vehicle that will be launched towards the end of this year.

Morocco’s Caisse de Depots et de Gestion (CDG) took over after Renault’s Japanese partner Nissan pulled out from the joint project in February 2009 due to the global financial meltdown.

The mega project is expected to generate 6000 direct jobs and some 30000 indirect jobs in the northern region of Morocco.

Other major groups such as Ford, Indian and Chinese manufacturers are currently prospecting the Moroccan market.

Neighbouring Algeria wants to emulate Morocco by holding talks with the French automobile giant to set up a factory in the north African country.

Environmentally friendly

The Tangier plant emits zero carbon and zero industrial liquid discharges thanks to joint efforts of Morocco, Renault and Veolia Environnement. These staggering results are achieved through the latest innovative manufacturing processes, the use of renewable energy and the optimization of the water cycle, according to Renault’s website.

CO2 emissions from the Tangier plant are cut by 98%, a figure that represents 135,000 fewer tons of CO2 every year, by optimizing energy consumption and using renewable energies. The few remaining tons of CO2are offset either by buying carbon credits or by generating renewable energy on site.

The plant does not discharge any industrial liquids and cuts its water consumption for manufacturing processes by 70% in comparison with a plant with equivalent output capacity.

::NY Times

It has no uranium, but lots of solar – yet Saudi Arabia plans to double down on nuclear capacity.

As we covered previously, working with China, Saudi Arabia will spend more than $100 billion to build 16 nuclear energy plants within the next few years, as part of ramping up its electric capacity. But the proposed solar budget might shock you.

The rapidly growing nation expects its installed electric capacity to about double by 2030 to 110 GW.  Official sources from Saudi Arabia say that they plan to get 20% of their electricity from nuclear, which will remain at a fifth of their electricity, even while domestic demand is growing at an estimated 8% over the next ten years.

That’s fine. They have the dough.

But what will it invest in solar power? After all, the Saudis could be exporting solar for the next twenty centuries.

“We have allocated $3 billion to produce solar energy panels in Jubail and Yanbu,”Commerce and Industry Minister Abdullah Zainal Alireza told a Saudi U.S. business forum where investment opportunities totaling $385 billion in the Kingdom were outlined.

At the forum in Atlanta Georgia, the Saudis were represented by an impressive 250-member delegation.

So just $3 billion of a proposed $385 billion investment the Saudis are planning to invest is be in solar. To me that is a very sorry figure -even though at least one solar CEO told me the Saudis are genuinely interested in solar. But $3 billion, compared to $100 billion for nuclear – for a nation that will have to import its uranium, unlike its abundant solar resource.

It seems that the fossil industry just much prefers to develop nuclear power than wind or solar.

Like the oil and coal-funded Republican party in the U.S. that will not subsidize clean energy and is always hankering after more nuclear power, and adding more funding for nuclear subsidies, likewise, the Saudis seem to believe that the off-ramp from oil means adding incredible amounts of nuclear power.

The 16 nuclear projects would be financed by the national revenue.

It is not as if the Saudis cannot afford solar. Despite the plateauing oil supplies, its economy has a growth rate paralleling some of the diverse manufacturing economies of rapidly growing Asia.

The commerce and industry minister said ”The Kingdom’s gross domestic product (GDP) grew by 4.1 percent in 2010 and the GDP growth rate in 2011 is expected to reach 6.5 percent.”

The Kingdom plans to get 10 percent of its electricity from solar – compared with 20 percent from nuclear.

But to get there, it expects to invest $100 billion to build 20 percent of its electricity from nuclear, and $3 billion to produce 10 percent of its electricity from solar. Having just opened the world’s largest solar hot water heating system on a university campus, the Saudis are underestimating solar electricity.

Something does not compute…or maybe it’s good news. Maybe they won’t need to buy retail from the U.S. because they plan to Make Desert Sands into Solar Polysilicon. DIY?

Image of desert planet from FILATOV ALEXEY/Shutterstock

Related: 

“We do have projects in development,” he said, “in Morocco, and Algeria and Saudi Arabia, Oman, which we’re looking at. There’s real opportunity there. So we’re looking at projects in those markets there, not as part of the Desertec program, but part of the buildup of the potential of solar in the Middle East and North Africa region.”

SolrReserve uses similar technology to the Gemasolar project built in Spain by Abu Dhabi’s visionary state-funded clean energy company Masdar. Because both use molten salt as both the transfer liquid and the storage medium, they can supply electricity long after dark.

(Related: Solar to Light Our Nights Gets Hotter)

“Our facility is a similar technology to theirs other than that ours is about six times as large as their project”, he told me. “So their project is really more of a pilot project. They’re I think 17 MW, we’re 110 MW. Ours is the first commercial utility-sized project of this type.”

I asked him for his impressions of Saudi interest in solar. He told me that among other projects Solar Reserve is looking at in Morocco, and Algeria and Oman, they are also looking at a possible Saudi Arabian project too.

I was surprised.

“Yeah, we’ve actually had a lot of really good reaction,” he said. “In fact our chief technology officer is in Saudi Arabia this week. We’ve had, we’ve been active for about eighteen months. The difficulties the Saudis have is their economy is all oil based. Really they want to maximise their exports of oil, but really what they’re using a lot of their oil for power generation in the country. It’s fine if oil is $20 a barrel, but now that they can sell it for $100 plus a barrel, it’s not a very cost-effective use of their oil.

“Plus they kind of see real declines in their oil production over the next twenty five years so they’re looking at ways to extend their oil export capability. They announced a program where they’re going to try and replace 20% of their electricity generation with solar by 2020, and thats a pretty big program, I mean, you’re talking thousands of megawatts”.

“They really only in the last couple of years, have started to really increase their solar activity. We expect there will be projects going into construction in Saudi next year. Hopefully with us, but certainly, with someone. We expect that their program will kick off next year. We hope we get can projects in construction in 2013.”

So soon?

“They’ve announced a request for bids that will be happening for later in the year. We hope in the next few months that they will identify that.”

What size are the Saudis looking for?

“Same size as our Nevada project, but they are really looking at multiple projects, so we could be looking at projects that are 500 MW and above – so like five Tonopahs, our Nevada-type projects on one site.”

I also asked him if he had encouraging impressions of the BrightSource (non) IPO. He was pretty blithe and unfazed.

“BrightSource is a good company. They’ve got strong projects in construction”, he said. “They are a different technology than ours. Clearly the markets right now are not very strong, either for Initial Public Offerings, or even just the business climate is weak right now. Its improving, we continue to see an improvement in the economy”.

“Our decision was not to look at IPO activity in 2012, we didn’t think the market makes sense right now and its clear from BrightSource’s activity that it’s not. You know, theyre a good company, they’ve got a nice pipeline of projects and we expect they’ll continue to be successful – we have a different business model, on IPO we’ll probably look at that next year”.