An Israeli firm inaugurated the first commercial-size solar field in Georgia on Friday as part of the state’s renewable energy initiative.
Energiya USA, a subsidiary of the Israel-based Energiya Global, won a 20-year contract with the state’s power utility in 2014 to provide 22.5 megawatts of electricity in a nearly 60-acre field located in Glynn County. This is the first of ten solar fields that Georgia Power is building, with nine others being developed across the state with different companies.
“As an Israeli company, we are proud to help the U.S. government take advantage of the land’s potential, especially in the field of solar energy,” said Energiya CEO Yosef Abramowitz.
Before the inauguration, Energiya received a “Deal of the Year” award by Conexx America-Israel Business Connector, which is given to “groundbreaking” Israeli companies conducting business in the United States.
Abramowitz was named one of six global Green Pioneers by CNN in 2013 “for his work developing solar energy in Israel and around the world.”
In The Sun Keeps Shining on Yosef Abramowitz, which was published in the June 2014 issue of The Tower Magazine, Abramowitz told Assaf Dudai that he was inspired to develop solar power by David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister.
The sun at Ketura is indeed unbelievable. First, it hangs alarmingly low in the sky. You can almost feel it brushing against your shoulder when you walk through the kibbutz. And it does not gently pat your shoulder like it does in Florida or Venice Beach. It comes in all its fury. It pushes hard, leaning its full weight on you. After a while, you feel like your posture is less upright than usual. Its light also seems stronger. It is tremendously white and blinding, generating a dense wall of heat. When the photographer, Aviram Valdman, and I came to visit the Ketura Sun solar field, we were immediately handed individual bottles of water. You don’t walk around Ketura without water, we were told. You get dehydrated pretty quickly.
So how come nobody else has ever thought of harnessing solar energy in Israel, even though a third of its territory is a sprawling, sun-drenched desert? “Actually,” Abramowitz smiles, “somebody did. His name was [David] Ben-Gurion.” Indeed, here is a startling 1956 quote from Israel’s first prime minister:
The largest and most impressive source of energy in our world and the source of life for every plant and animal, yet a source so little used by mankind is the sun… solar energy will continue to flow toward us almost indefinitely.
Ben-Gurion initiated the nationwide use of solar power for water heaters, making Israel the first country in the world to use solar power for this purpose.
As almost everyone knows, Ben-Gurion also had a thing for the desert. He loved it, and had a grand vision for developing the Arava. Maybe it was his relentless, stubborn nature. Seeing an obstacle before his young state, he just had to overcome it. If the state could conquer the desert, he thought, it could achieve anything.
Abramowitz is eager to take up where Ben-Gurion left off. “We always believed that if there are benefits for the residents of the Arava, the desert will finally bloom,” he says, “so all of Arava Power’s efforts are directed at the Arava.” By the end of 2015, Arava Power’s eight solar fields will provide the entire electric supply for Eilat, Israel’s southernmost city. That’s a remarkable achievement by global standards, but the road to it was mighty dusty. “We had a hundred battles to win,” Abramowitz recalls.
[Photo: ChristofferRiemer / WikiCommons ]