Maria Telkes and the Dover Sun House. The large windows faced the sun and collected heat and stored the energy in salts. Dover Sun House was one of the world’s first solar-heated houses. 

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The Energy and Mines World Congress shows that 2019 will be considered the tipping point for solar and wind projects in the mining sector

The Energy and Mines World Congress that took place in Toronto provided great insights into the recent developments of onsite renewable energy applications at remote mines. Getting power lines to remote locations is hard, very hard. Trucking in fuel for polluting generators is the only other solution. Now the industry is understanding that renewable energy makes sense and cents.

This year 2019 is the tipping point. The business case for partly substituting expensive fuel like diesel, heavy fuel oil (HFO) or gas by solar and wind had been positive on paper for years. However, actual projects have evolved slowly. In 2019, almost a dozen new projects have been officially announced and at the same time many more projects are under development and on the verge of being announced.

Nick Holland, CEO of Gold Fields, a mining company that is a pioneer in integrating renewables, pointed out that costs savings are possible, and a cost-efficient decentralization of power generation enabled by renewables comes with further advantages: “Renewables make for great business – lower cost and supply security. Independence from the grid is critical – microgrids are the future!” he said.

Sustainability goes well beyond renewables

Mining companies see the need to decarbonize and pursue initiatives that go well beyond renewables, such as electrification of mining vehicles. These initiatives will further increase the electricity demand in mining and in the long run the need for locally generated renewable energy.

Trust in renewables has been building up over the years

Miners are gaining trust in renewable energy solutions. The fear of production losses has been decreasing over the past years with every new renewable energy system that has been added to a mine globally. Before, the general attitude was characterized by “wait and see”, but the mode has been changing in 2019 to “let’s act now”.

The individual decision makers today run a relatively low perceived risk by driving forward renewable energy projects. The solutions that are being built now are often more sophisticated than they were before, and they incorporate a higher share of renewables that is also enabled by storage solutions. Read more here about types of solar panels.

Australia and Africa are leading the way

The epicenters of these developments are Australia and Sub-Saharan Africa, two regions having substantial areas with insufficient public grids and typically excellent solar resources.

At the same time, renewable energy development also has a local driver. Though the mining sector is rather global, the word-of-mouth and political pressure on mining players to add renewables unleashes additional speed on a local level.

Shorter power purchase agreements (PPAs)

In comparison to the physical lifetime of solar and wind assets, the lifetime of mines or the mining licenses are often rather short. In addition, miners are used to relatively short-term energy supply for diesel, HFO (or heavy fuel oil) and gas.

Long-term purchase agreements for renewable energy often require a change of thinking and have slowed down the development of many projects in the past. More and more companies have come up with redeployable solar solutions that allow for offering short-term PPAs. On the hardware-side, the costs of redeployable solar solutions have come down significantly, but at the same time this approach is a bet on future growth of this segment. Redeployability also means that new target projects need to be available within a reasonable time period in the future. If not, the solar assets would have to be stored in warehouses until new deployment, which can prove to be costly.

Combining different renewable energy sources and energy storage

Several newly announced projects combine solar and wind power. One of the biggest disadvantages of solar and wind solutions is that they generate unsteady energy. Solar and wind output are often negatively correlated, which means that when solar irradiation is high wind speeds are typically low, and vice versa. This phenomenon allows for increasing the renewable energy share in the system while minimizing the need for storage.

In his presentation at the Energy and Mines World Congress, Thomas Hillig, Managing Director of the consulting firm THEnergy, said that for mining companies it makes sense to consider all sustainability levers and that also hydro could experience a real renaissance:

“In a research project that is supported by the German government with approximately USD 1 million, THEnergy is analyzing in collaboration with two universities, RWTH Aachen and TU München, the potential of hydro-electric solutions in the mining sector. We are still looking for mines in Peru to participate – free of any charge.”

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It will be the fifth largest solar plant in the world when done. The earth revolves around the sun, and so does the green-tech industry. Some of the earliest pioneers of solar energy started in Israel 30 years ago with the company Luz.

Luz went on to become Luz II, then BrightSource, which is now a US-based solar power company about to flip the switch on a massive 377-megawatt solar thermal farm in the California desert.

And at the start of 2014, the sun and stars will align and a dream will be coming true for Israeli solar pioneers and visionaries like BrightSource Israel CEO Israel Kroizer.

BrightSource will break ground on one of the world’s largest solar thermal energy plants, in Israel. The Ashalim plant is expected to produce 121 megawatts of solar energy in the Negev Desert by 2016, providing enough “green” energy to fuel 40,000 Israeli homes.

After many bureaucratic hurdles, BrightSource –– which uses mirrors called heliostats to focus the sun’s rays on a tower to create steam to drive turbines –– is finally returning “home” and is fulfilling a dream to help make Israel energy secure, says Kroizer.

He was with BrightSource from its genesis and says that the new solar plant, developed by the Megalim consortium of BrightSource and France’s Alstom SA, is more than a business deal — it’s personal. BrightSource, he notes, employs about 400 people, 300 of whom are engineers and development staff working mainly in Jerusalem, where its international R&D happens.

Sunning the engineers close to home

“The staff is very happy to be working in the country, in Israel. It’s a real help to have a big project next door to us,” he tells Green Prophet. “We will learn a lot from it, instead of flying 10,000 miles to California every time we want to learn something.”

The $1.1 billion solar thermal energy plant being developed in Israel is the country’s first large-scale solar energy field, and one of the biggest of its kind in the world. It will heighten Israel’s prominence on the map of clean-tech entrepreneurship and green energy production.

Kroizer says: “The government gave us a very good structure and we appreciate it very much. The way we will run this project is as though it will be the crown jewel of all our projects. Yes, even over our project in California.

“The Israel project is close to us and everyone involved in it wants to make it the best,” he told me, not disclosing any financial developments still in sensitive boardroom talks.

Putting the BrightSource deal into proportion, Israel’s Ketura Sun was the first to launch a mid-size solar energy field in 2011.

Ketura was developed by Arava Power Company and Yosef “Kaptain Sunshine” Abramowitz. It produces five megawatts of energy, a fraction of what the BrightSource plant will provide. Arava, however, is expected to produce an additional 58.5 megawatts in the future, based on contracts it won in 2012.

Unlike the Suntech photovoltaic (PV) panels used by Arava, which convert the sun’s power into electricity directly, BrightSource focuses the sun’s rays from hundreds of ground-based mirrors to a collection tower. There the solar heat boils water to create steam to drive power turbines.

The solar thermal route is somewhat more complicated, and therefore expensive, than PV panels.

Kroizer says the two types of technology serve two different markets. “Almost every country installing solar energy is installing both kinds of solar solutions, in a certain proportion, to compensate for the grid’s limits,” he says.

Stabilizing the grid

He also argues that thermal storage is more suitable to the grid.

“With PV, you get energy when the sun is ‘on.’ When the sun is ‘off,’ you don’t have energy. The difference in the cost is basically compensating for this value of more stability in the grid, which is what the grid needs.”

Another advantage to the BrightSource technology is that the heliostats can be positioned on uneven ground, unlike PV panels.

Despite its developments in America, BrightSource still faces hurdles there: It pulled out of a recent American IPO, it has lost valuable energy buy-back contracts this past year; and CEO John Woolard recently stepped down, reportedly to spend more time with his family.

Meanwhile, the company is working on the paperwork to win a tender for a second solar thermal plant in Israel to produce about 60 megawatts, at the same time it secures financing for the bigger Ashalim project.

For business travelers and the curious who are coming to Israel, BrightSource has a pilot six-megawatt project in operation in the Rotem Industrial Park built in 2008, open to the public. A new visitor center may be built at the Ashalim plant if there is enough interest, says Kroizer.

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Siemens, Germany’s giant electronics firm, appears to be in final stages of pulling out from its investment in Israel’s Solel Solar initiative. The four-year project began in 2009, when Siemens entered into an agreement to buy  the Israeli solar company. The beleaguered solar energy projects company received what seems to be a death knell.

Siemens recently announced the firing of 150 of its remaining 200 employees, leaving only a technical staff of 50 employees to deal with some solar energy projects in Spain.

News of this action appeared Sunday in Israel’s Globes financial newspaper,  which reported that the action was due to Siemens not being able to find a buyer for the ailing thermal solar projects  company.

Solel Solar became known as a global leader in building solar thermal fields, using parabolic mirrors that concentrate the solar energy onto solar thermal receivers containing a heat transfer fluid. The heat transfer fluid is circulated and heated through the receivers, and the heat is released to a series of heat exchangers to generate super-heated steam.

The steam powers a turbine/generator to produce electricity delivered to a utility’s electric grid. Although the company did supply solar thermal plants for some projects, including some in Spain, there has been controversy surrounding using large solar mirror projects which environmental experts fear may cause blindness to animals living in the areas when the solar mirrors are erected making them a “death Knell” for area wildlife.

Siemens acquired Solel Solar in 2009 for $418 million USD and at its peak 400 employees worked there. Besides the environmental issues, the thermal solar technology used  became too expensive to compete in a declining solar energy market where  photovoltaic solar panels were also having market problems. Siemens made a decision in late 2012 to quit the solar energy business.

A Spanish company, Abengoa SA had made a previous offer to purchase Solel Solar from Siemens. It later withdrew the offer when it became apparent that the future of the solar energy market was uncertain. Siemens has lost “hundreds of millions of Euros” in the project.

Read more on Siemens and Solel Solar:

Siemens Exits Israel’s Solel Solar Initiative

German Giant is Selling off Solel and its Solar Assets

New Study Shows that Negev Solar Farm is a Death Knell for Wildlife.

Siemens Mulls Buying Israeli Solar Company Solel

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“Due to the changed framework conditions, lower growth and strong price pressure in the solar markets, the company’s expectations for its solar energy activities have not been met,” Siemens said in a statement, according to Bloomberg.

Since prices for photovoltaic panels have plummeted in recent years, solar thermal is becoming increasingly less attractive for all but four major providers. BrightSource and Solar Reserve are still hanging tough in California, writes Forbes, as are Abengoa in Spain and Areva in France.

Areva has just lost a large uranium contract with the Kingdom of Jordan, however.

Solar thermal energy is generated by focusing sometimes hundreds of mirrors on steam-generating boilers that then power a turbine. And Solel’s parabolic troughs are essentially the dinosaurs of this kind of plant, since it still relies on parabolic trough technology that focus the sun on tubes of molten salt running through the mirrors.

Some solar thermal plants are still more energy efficient than photovoltaics, but it’s harder to provide energy storage, which utility companies require in order to ensure optimum stability.

But if Solel’s solar system is so shoddy, who will want to buy it? Maybe China, predicts Forbes, since they have been scouting out new solar opportunities.

:: Forbes

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The move is a positive for Egypt’s renewable energy sector, which has largely been quiet since January 2011, when an uprising ousted the former regime from power. Since then, the economic woes in the country have seen numerous projects scrapped, but the Council believes that the new measures will entice investors to go green with their energy needs.

It also stated that the “allocation of plots of land belonging to the Renewable Energy Authority would be made available to private companies working in the field.”

The goal is to establish “production projects and the sale of electric power systems for not less than two percent the total energy produced annually from the project.”

While ambitious, Minister of Electricity and Energy Mahmoud Balba’a believes it can boost the investment potential of Egypt’s alternative energy sector (see our impressive coverage and photos of the Kuraymat solar plant), which had been growing dramatically in recent years before the uprising.

“The facilities include requiring the Egyptian Company for Electricity Transmission to purchase energy produced, or to authorize transfers to entities contracted, with a commitment to prices set by the Council of Ministers, according to the system slides approved for sale of electricity to the citizens,” he said.

The ministry, earlier this year, said they hope a new 1000 MW power project aims to contribute 1,000 megawatts of power to the country and will be fully functional by 2016 to help ease Egypt’s electricity needs.

The country hopes to be using some 20 percent of all power from alternative sources by 2020. Currently, Egypt has a 200 MW wind farm on the Red Sea coast with Spain’s Gamesa and the entire region is producing some 400 MW of total wind power. There is also a 150 MW solar thermal plant 90 km south of Cairo in operation.

Image of Kuraymat solar thermal plant by Tafline Laylin/Green Prophet

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The inside of Tigi’s solar energy collector looks like a honeycomb. This unique shape helps collect more sun power more efficiently than regular solar collectors –– so efficiently that boiling hot water made from the sun can even be piped in to heat homes.

Tigi’s Honeycomb Collector is based on a “transparent insulation mechanism” developed by founder Shimon Klier, an Israeli industrialist. This approach increases the efficiency of the collector with minimal heat loss.

The result is a free and endless source of heat, even during the winter months in cold countries like Germany.

Historically, warm countries like Israel have led the way in developing and using solar thermal energy for heating water in rooftop tanks, but Tigi’s breakthrough technology aims to reduce national energy loads in cold countries, says Tigi’s CEO Zvika Klier, who is running the company based on his father Shimon’s patents dating back to the 1980s.

So great is the potential for Tigi to change the domestic energy landscape in Europe that it was awarded an Intersolar Europe prize in June.

“We minimize losses and create a situation where there is a meaningful difference in performance – this is huge, especially if you need water heated to a temperature much higher than the ambient temperature,” Klier tells ISRAEL21c.

Reducing national energy bills

He explains: “If you take Canada, where over 40 percent of the entire energy bill goes to heating, while at the same time you look at renewable energy solutions of solar thermal collectors –– there are 16 million square meters of solar thermal collectors installed for heating worldwide — almost all of them are installed in climates similar to Israel, and almost all go to domestic hot water.

“And why is this? Because this is where the current solution for heating water works well. Space heating, however, is 10 times the cost on the energy bill versus heating hot water. We want to take solar domestic hot water to cooler climates, to provide applications that supply more heat,” Klier explains.

Currently only 1% of the 15% of energy that goes to heating in Europe comes from renewable sources, he says. “We are looking at the potential for dramatic growth and this is where we want to be. This is why we won the solar award recently.”

How does Tigi Solar work?

Tigi’s solar energy collector looks a lot like a photovoltaic PV panel or a solar thermal panel. But the inside is made from honeycomb-shaped collectors, a technology that creates hot water efficiently and rapidly, even in northern latitudes. The panels can be put on a roof or the wall of a building.

“The honeycomb holds air from circulating. It reduces losses to convection,” says Klier.

This twist was thought up by Klier’s father, who invented the honeycombs in the early 1980s oil crisis in Israel. One of the leaders in the textile business, Shimon Klier figured it made no sense to pay more money for hot water in his factories than for the salaries of his 12,000 employees.

“That was a big red light for my father, who is a very technical person, and an innovator and entrepreneur,” says Klier.

A family in solar innovation

His father went on to invent transparent insulation, the basis of the Honeycomb Collector. However, the idea got put on hold as energy prices plummeted in the early 1990s, and was resurrected about five years ago when Klier was looking for the next big thing in high-tech. He was formerly the CEO of 3DV Systems, which was sold to Microsoft, and president of Arel Communications, a distance learning company.

After doing due diligence on about 15 companies, he revisited his father’s idea and found himself intrigued.

“I thought this was more interesting by far than the opportunities out there in high tech,” he tells ISRAEL21c.

Founded in 2007, Tigi is based in Petah Tikvah, Israel. The company employs 10 people and is funded privately by the Klier family and by private angel industrialists. The company is currently looking for a $3 million to 5 million investment to take the product to market by the end of 2012. The first focus will be Germany.

::Tigi website

This article first appeared on ISRAEL21c, www.israel21c.org.

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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

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The world’s largest solar thermal plant – nearly double the size of the original largest in Denmark – is now online in Saudi Arabia, reinforcing the notion that this Gulf country has the potential to maintain its current oil wealth by exporting solar power for the next twenty centuries.

Originally awarded to Jordan’s Millennium Energy Industries in 2010, the $14 million project in Riyadh is the size of 5 football pitches and produces enough energy to heat water for 40,000 students at the Princess Noura bint AbdulRahman University campus in Riyadh.

The largest women-only university in the world (we’re breaking all kinds of records here), the campus has 15 academic faculty buildings, a variety of labs and a 700-bed hospital. All of the water in these facilities will be heated by the gargantuan roof-mounted solar panels. It is the first university in the Kingdom to rely on a district solar water heater.

Millennium Energy, which was responsible for the design and build of the solar thermal plant, subcontracted Greenonetec, an Austrian manufacturer, to supply the GK 3000 series solar collectors, and received solar thermal application expertise from the Austrian company AEE Intec.

These panels have a 95% absorption rate and weigh 170kg. They are 10 by 5 meters large and are especially designed to withstand the desert’s fierce sandstorms.

Other energy saving technology incorporated into the university’s design will result in annual carbon savings of 125 million kilograms, making this by far the most sustainable campus in all of Saudi.

The rooftop system covers a total area of 36,305m² compared to the former largest solar thermal power plant in Denmark, which covers an area of 19,875 m².

After a six month trial period, each one of the six solar fields has been uncovered and six tanks of 150m³ have been built to store excess solar heat at 110°C.

:: Power Technology, Construction Week Online

More Saudi Cleantech:
Saudi Could Export Solar for the Next Twenty Centuries
Saudi to Make Desert Sands into Solar Polysilicon
Could Saudi Become the Saudi Arabia of Solar?

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Able to store enough heat to generate power that can last well into the night, Masdar’s Gemasolar, built in Spain last year was state of the art in solar thermal energy storage, able to reach temperatures of over 500°C. Now a U.S. startup funded by the Obama administration energy department with a $3.3 million ARPA-E grant has a way to make that even better.

Halotechnics has devised the perfect material to store higher heat, so that more solar energy can be stored to keep the lights on well after sundown.

Their innovation could make solar thermal as cheap and convenient as fossil fuels, but with none of the nasty side effects of burning fossil energy – like asthma, and petrostate political systems, and an unlivable climate for our children.

This could be very big news for Desertec and the MENA region, because it is at center stage for solar thermal development.

The way the heat-storage in solar thermal plants works now, salts are heated up above their melting point, up to their highest working temperature (565 ⁰C), stored till needed in a large insulated tank, and used to generate steam which drives a turbine to generate the electricity. Because this molten salt mixture holds the heat, it can be tapped on demand, and in Masdar’s case, provide 15 hours of solar power a day.

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

Halotechnics was spun out of a chemical spun-off from high-throughput chemicals screening company Symyx (now a part of Accelrys) that specializes in combing through multitudes of chemical combinations for various needs, and was able to check out over 18,000 combinations of materials to find the perfect combination to hold heat.

The perfect solution turned out to be two materials—one an improved salt mixture, and the other a completely new form of glass which can operate at greatly increased temperatures, reducing the amount of storage material needed and potentially improving efficiency.

These allow for about three times more energy storage than current solar thermal plants, which could reduce the size of the mirror array needed by up to about 25 percent, increasing their efficiency.

The start-up’s invention could be an important connection for the MENA region, which is fast becoming center stage in solar thermal techology, because this is where some of the largest solar thermal plants in the world are under development (Desertec Begins: 500 MW Moroccan Solar in 2012) (Tunisia Announces 4th Desertec Deal and 2 GW of Solar!) as well as for Abu Dhabi’s Masdar.

Masdar’s Gemasolar solar thermal plant in Spain can store heat so it is able to operate for fifteen hours a day, because they use the molten salt as the transfer fluid as well as the storage medium (most companies only use the molten salt for storage, not transfer).

Gemasolar gets temperatures of over 500 °C. But Halotechnics has developed a molten salt that could operate up to 700 °C (with the same melting point).

“To hit that six-cent goal, or get close to it, you have to go to a higher-temperature system,” says Mark Mehos, manager of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory’s  Concentrated Solar Power program, in Golden, Colorado.

“The systems that are commercial today are limited to about 565 °C—that’s the molten salt tower plants,” says Mehos. “The tower and optics themselves can hit higher temperatures, but you’re limited by the salt temperature right now.”

The materials are being tested for long-term compatibility with the steel pipes and containers used in storage systems, and the company plans to start pilot tests in 18 months.

Its initial research was funded so far by Uncle Sam, but now the company is now looking for an investor to commercialize the innovation.

Hmmm… I wonder which MENA region solar thermal developer might be interested in partnering with this company?

Related:

Which Solar Technologies Will Have the Most Investment Appeal
Airlight Energy Brings CSP to Morocco from Switzerland
MENA Cleantech Sees ‘Existential Need’ for CSP in Middle East

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