A series of solar energy power stations in the Negev could supply all of Israel’s power needs – or, if you wanted to be really ambitious, you could supply all of the world’s electricity needs with the aid of slightly under 10 per cent of the Sahara. So says Professor David Faiman of Israel’s Ben-Gurion University, man with a plan and current proprietor of the largest solar energy dish in the world. The Negev Desert dish is operated by Ben-Gurion’s National Solar Energy Center in the Negev, and speaking at the DLD (Digital Life, Design) conference in Munich earlier this week, Center director Faiman tallied off the economics of solar power generation. Conventional solar panels are expensive, because photovoltaic cells, which combine the capability to collect energy and to convert it to electricity, are themselves expensive. One route to cutting the cost is being pursued by Nanosolar (http://www.nanosolar.com/7areasofinnovation.htm) (Nanosolar director of products Roby Stancel was speaking at the same session as Faiman), which is printing the cells onto thin sheets. Taking a different approach, the Negev plant uses large curved glass mirrors to focus sunlight onto a 10cm x 10cm area of cells. Both routes have their advantages […]