Middle East

New research from Turkey shows the need for a more rigorous approach to PV site selection due to increasing hydrological extremes. The scientists claim that fixed-distance buffer zones are not sufficient to protect solar farms from flood and erosion hazards.

The typical volume of excess clean power wasted daily on the island has rocketed since last year. With a fossil fuel industry veteran heading the energy department after February’s presidential election, what prospect is there of a green transition?

New research has shown that Israel has the technical potential to deploy 172.5 GW of photovoltaics, of which 132.1 GW would be from conventional installations and 40 GW from agrivoltaics. If deployed, this full potential would require energy storage with a capacity of at least 500 GWh and strong development of vehicle-to-grid technologies.

With the rapid growth in electric vehicle (EV) demand bringing fears of a mountain of EV battery waste piling up further down the line, the EU-Swiss government-funded Recirculate program is planning how to keep batteries in use for much longer before they head to recyclers.

Israeli developer Tigi Solar is deploying an industrial heat pump to support the heating system at the facility of a food industry enterprise in Israel. The heat pump has an output of 780 kW and a coefficient of performance (COP) of 4.6. It uses existing ammonia chiller waste heat as the heat source and can reportedly provide a hot water temperature of 65 C.

The novel heat pump, developed by a research group in Israel, consists of a loudspeaker, a resonator, and a thermoacoustic core placed inside the resonator. The core includes a cold heat exchanger, a stack, and an ambient heat exchanger.

French energy company EDF has built a new 40 MW solar farm in Ashalim, in Israel’s Negev Desert.

Nexans has signed a contract to build a submarine transmission line as the first phase of the EuroAsia Interconnector, which will connect Greece, Israel, and Cyprus.

Researchers in the Middle East have developed a new design for energy systems combining PV power generation with Trombe walls in buildings. They claim their new system configuration with reflective mirrors offers improved overall system efficiency both in terms of heating and electricity production.

Scientists in Cyprus evaluated six different models used to predict the power losses caused by the accumulation of dust, dirt, and other substances on the surface of PV panels in the island’s arid climate. Results from the various models were compared with soiling loss data from a “test bench” installation at the University of Cyprus in Nicosia, revealing a potential advantage for machine-learning approaches backed by satellite data.