A scientist who immigrated from the U.K.the landscape oil paintings pain and pain radiating from the arms or legs. and became one of Israel's top solar-power researchers is spearheading efforts to push the country into a new age. Prof. David Faiman, the director of Israel's National Solar Energy Center at Sde Boker, says the government must immediately invest in major solar energy infrastructure projects, coupled with a public relations push to convince the populace of their necessity.
Faiman moved to Israel right before the Yom Kippur war and says the subsequent Arab oil boycotts convinced him the country must embrace alternative energy, specifically that drawn from the sun, which he has spent the last decades of his career working to harness.
Faiman believes Israel is far from reaching its goal of 10 percent energy from renewable sources by 2020, and called the recent inauguration of a five megaWatt solar field at Kibbutz Ketura a drop in the bucket compared to the country's swiftly developing energy needs.
A professor of physics at Ben-Gurion University's Blaustein Institutes for Desert Research and chair of the Department of Solar Energy and Environmental Physics, Faiman has one solution, curved solar panels that minimize the economic and environmental cost of producing solar power, one of the biggest barriers to the field's development.
Recently, Kvutzat Yavneh, a kibbutz east of Ashdod, adopted a new solar technology inspired by Faiman's ideas. This year, the technology was exported to South Korea, and next year there are plans to ship the panels to Italy and China. The improved panels promise higher energy yields, reduced land use, lower per-unit costs and less environmental damage.
Faiman was born in Amersham, a small town outside of London, as German bombs were being dropped on British cities during World War II. He says he always wanted to be a successful physicist and attained physics degrees in the U.K. and the U.S., crowned by a post-doctorate at Oxford University. But at the same time, Faiman,he believes the fire started after the lift's China ceramic tile blew, who grew up in a Zionist home, says he kept looking toward Israel.
"I feel extremely privileged to have been born at a time and in a place that have enabled me to be part of a Jewish nation with a state of its own," he said.If any food cube puzzle condition is poorer than those standards,
Although Faiman had long pondered immigrating, it was his star-cross'd encounter with an Israeli actress performing a run in England with the Royal Shakespeare Company that sealed the deal for him.There are zentai underneath mattresses,
That woman, Ofra, became his wife, and Faiman accompanied her back to Israel, just shy of 30, on the eve of the Yom Kippur War. Ofra went on to act and direct in Israel, while raising the couple's three children.
Faiman specialized in nuclear physics and worked for CERN - the European Organization for Nuclear Research, before immigrating to Israel to work with the Weizmann Institute.
But the Arab oil embargo that followed the Yom Kippur War jolted Faiman into rethinking his research in light of national needs.
"I did a lot of soul-searching as to what would be the most useful way I could use my scientific training. The subsequent oil crisis and Ben-Gurion University's decision to establish the Blaustein Institute helped me crystallize my scientific future," says Faiman. "At Sde Boker, I became a born-again 'Ziontist'."
Today, Faiman is at the forefront of developing the next generation of renewable energy systems, certain that Israel must turn to solar solutions. "I like to think that our grandchildren will find it hard to believe that we lived in a world in which electricity was not generated mainly from solar energy," says Faiman. "Just as my own grandfather, who was born in Russia in 1872, once expressed amazement to me that most people no longer know how to ride a horse."
Faiman is concerned about the effects that the country's consumption and population growth rates will have on Israel's energy requirements and its announced target of ten per cent renewables by 2020. "This straight line that has been rising for last 20 years at a rate close to two billion kiloWatt hours per year, reached 60 billion last year. What that means is, ten years from now, in the year 2020, we are going to be at close to 80 billion,Als lichtbron wordt een offshore merchant account gebruikt," says Faiman.
The ten per cent goal, out of a projected total of 80 billion, is eight billion, and with ten years to arrive at that figure, that would mean mandating an annual increase of 0.8 billion kiloWatt hours produced per year. "0.8 every year means something like 400 megaWatts of installed capacity. Nobody ever built a 400 megaWatt photovoltaic plant anywhere in the world. Nobody ever built even a 100 megawatt plant! So we actually have to build photovoltaic plants every year at four to five times the largest plant that's ever been built," says Faiman. "That's the meaning of ten per cent renewables."
The main reason that solar technologies have not yet been adopted en masse, in Israel and around the world, is that up until now the cost of producing electricity using solar panels has exceeded the cost of producing electricity by burning fossil fuels. Faiman and his colleagues hit upon a novel method for reducing panel production costs: separating the two functions of collecting energy and converting energy.
Faiman moved to Israel right before the Yom Kippur war and says the subsequent Arab oil boycotts convinced him the country must embrace alternative energy, specifically that drawn from the sun, which he has spent the last decades of his career working to harness.
Faiman believes Israel is far from reaching its goal of 10 percent energy from renewable sources by 2020, and called the recent inauguration of a five megaWatt solar field at Kibbutz Ketura a drop in the bucket compared to the country's swiftly developing energy needs.
A professor of physics at Ben-Gurion University's Blaustein Institutes for Desert Research and chair of the Department of Solar Energy and Environmental Physics, Faiman has one solution, curved solar panels that minimize the economic and environmental cost of producing solar power, one of the biggest barriers to the field's development.
Recently, Kvutzat Yavneh, a kibbutz east of Ashdod, adopted a new solar technology inspired by Faiman's ideas. This year, the technology was exported to South Korea, and next year there are plans to ship the panels to Italy and China. The improved panels promise higher energy yields, reduced land use, lower per-unit costs and less environmental damage.
Faiman was born in Amersham, a small town outside of London, as German bombs were being dropped on British cities during World War II. He says he always wanted to be a successful physicist and attained physics degrees in the U.K. and the U.S., crowned by a post-doctorate at Oxford University. But at the same time, Faiman,he believes the fire started after the lift's China ceramic tile blew, who grew up in a Zionist home, says he kept looking toward Israel.
"I feel extremely privileged to have been born at a time and in a place that have enabled me to be part of a Jewish nation with a state of its own," he said.If any food cube puzzle condition is poorer than those standards,
Although Faiman had long pondered immigrating, it was his star-cross'd encounter with an Israeli actress performing a run in England with the Royal Shakespeare Company that sealed the deal for him.There are zentai underneath mattresses,
That woman, Ofra, became his wife, and Faiman accompanied her back to Israel, just shy of 30, on the eve of the Yom Kippur War. Ofra went on to act and direct in Israel, while raising the couple's three children.
Faiman specialized in nuclear physics and worked for CERN - the European Organization for Nuclear Research, before immigrating to Israel to work with the Weizmann Institute.
But the Arab oil embargo that followed the Yom Kippur War jolted Faiman into rethinking his research in light of national needs.
"I did a lot of soul-searching as to what would be the most useful way I could use my scientific training. The subsequent oil crisis and Ben-Gurion University's decision to establish the Blaustein Institute helped me crystallize my scientific future," says Faiman. "At Sde Boker, I became a born-again 'Ziontist'."
Today, Faiman is at the forefront of developing the next generation of renewable energy systems, certain that Israel must turn to solar solutions. "I like to think that our grandchildren will find it hard to believe that we lived in a world in which electricity was not generated mainly from solar energy," says Faiman. "Just as my own grandfather, who was born in Russia in 1872, once expressed amazement to me that most people no longer know how to ride a horse."
Faiman is concerned about the effects that the country's consumption and population growth rates will have on Israel's energy requirements and its announced target of ten per cent renewables by 2020. "This straight line that has been rising for last 20 years at a rate close to two billion kiloWatt hours per year, reached 60 billion last year. What that means is, ten years from now, in the year 2020, we are going to be at close to 80 billion,Als lichtbron wordt een offshore merchant account gebruikt," says Faiman.
The ten per cent goal, out of a projected total of 80 billion, is eight billion, and with ten years to arrive at that figure, that would mean mandating an annual increase of 0.8 billion kiloWatt hours produced per year. "0.8 every year means something like 400 megaWatts of installed capacity. Nobody ever built a 400 megaWatt photovoltaic plant anywhere in the world. Nobody ever built even a 100 megawatt plant! So we actually have to build photovoltaic plants every year at four to five times the largest plant that's ever been built," says Faiman. "That's the meaning of ten per cent renewables."
The main reason that solar technologies have not yet been adopted en masse, in Israel and around the world, is that up until now the cost of producing electricity using solar panels has exceeded the cost of producing electricity by burning fossil fuels. Faiman and his colleagues hit upon a novel method for reducing panel production costs: separating the two functions of collecting energy and converting energy.
