Light Matters

We met with three of Tel Aviv University researchers across the TAU campus, who are preoccupied with light related projects all year around.

Soaking Up the Sun

Israel and Jordan recently signed an UAE-brokered cooperation agreement, whereby Israel will be purchasing electricity generated at a major Jordan-based solar power plant. Why, you may ask, is this necessary? Do we not have enough sunlight here in Israel?

Israel is indeed blessed with plenty of sunlight, however a number of hurdles are standing in the way of a much-needed solar revolution, including finding room for all the solar panels required to power electricity. This problem is not unique to Israel, advances here has the potential to help many other countries.

"Using large amounts of undisturbed land for solar energy is not environmentally acceptable," explains Prof. Abraham Kribus from The Iby and Aladar Fleischman Faculty of Engineering. "In Israel, we’ll need about 1000 square km to produce all our electricity. Installing solar panels over agricultural fields can solve the problem of land area shortage for solar power. However, the panels block sunlight that the plants need and may reduce the crop productivity."

He is currently working on a research project in partnership with the Volcani Institute, that divides sunlight between growing plants and solar panels for electricity generation. "We use an element called ‘hot mirror’ or ’spectral splitter’ to divide sunlight by color: visible light that the plants need for photosynthesis goes to the crop, while other colors (not visible to human eyes) go to the solar panels. We’ve built a lab-scale model of the collector, are testing its behavior and carrying out additional experiments to investigate the response of various crops to modified sunlight. We’ve completed the first year and have two more to go."

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