Arava Power Plans 80 Megawatt PV Plant
Israel is a country that, along with the rest of its Middle East neighbors, gets a lot of sunlight. However, aside from its nearly ubiquitous rooftop solar water heaters, Israel has no solar power production facility of any kind… until now. Arava Power, a solar PV startup, is planning to break ground on an 80 MW facility. For reference, the current largest PV power plant (according to pvresources.com) is 60 MW, in Spain.
Arava had to secure approval from the Israeli government in order to rezone the land (which belongs to kibbutzes, traditional Israeli agricultural communities) for use as a power generating facility. Coming to terms with the Israel Electric Company was another major accomplishment – the IEC agreed to built a transmission line connecting the PV plant with the rest of the grid.
Driving all this progress is Arava’s founder, Yosef Israel Abramowitz, and chairman Ed Hofland, a veteran of Kibbutz Ketura – the kibbutz that is partnering on the project. Abramowitz started out his career as a journalist and political activist in the US, and later founded his own media company. He moved to Israel in 2006 to “take some time off”, but when he arrived he was shocked to discover that none of Israel’s electricity came from solar power, despite the powerful Middle Eastern sun rays. He decided then and there to found what eventually became Arava.
