Solarized Gas Turbine System: Hybrid Power for Distributed Generation

Aora

An Isreali company has developed what I believe is a very innovative and technically interesting product. It is also very encouraging as it may have far reaching implications for developing countries that do not have an infrastructure of centrally generated electrical power. The company is AORA-Solar and they have developed a hybrid solar power station that they are testing in Isreal’s Negev desert. The system use both traditional fuels such as diesel ,natural gas or bio-fuels and the power of the sun.

  The company calls it a solarized gas turbine and typically each microturbine is capable of producing 100kWe.  This hybrid solar turbine produces power on demand from a solar tower thermal system of focused sunlight from heliostat controlled mirrors on the ground provided there is sufficient sunlight to meet demand. If more power is required than the hybrid turbine produces the difference from the conventional fuels.

According to Pinchas Doran,  Chief Technical Officer for AORA the system will automatically shift between sun and conventional fuel as required.

Beginning next year if all goes well the company hopes to begin installing additional systems around Isreal and to begin exporting the technology to markets such as California, Arizone, Austalia and southern europe.

Yaval Susskind, Operations Manager for Aora-Solar:

My vision is to see one of these puppies ( hybrid tower) outside of every villlage in Africa.

Aora

Aora sucessfully completed a pilot installation in China in 2006 before beginning their latest project in the Arava Valley in southern Isreal.

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