(ENVIRO) Israel’s First Tidal Power Plant Completed In Jaffa

"It’s where the ancient biblical story Jonah and the Whale took place. Now SDE Energy builds tidal energy plant in Jaffa, which should expand to 50 MW.

The ancient port city of Jaffa, today a part of Tel Aviv, has added one more attraction to its historical harbor as a new sea wave power plant is completed.

The Israeli tidal wave energy firm S.D.E. have completed the construction of its first large scale sea wave power plant capable of producing 60 KWh.

The new plant only has one buoy and is fully automated with only 10 percent of it in the water so to minimize the risk of damage to the system by storms and other natural disasters. The company already has business in China, India, and in Africa.

The plant which is the ninth completed by the firm is the initial part of a plan the will lead to a 50 MW plant in the breakwaters of Jaffa, when finished to new plant will not only provide cost efficient renewable centricity to the port but also prevent the erosion of the breakwater usually caused by high wave. The firm has come to an agreement with Israel’s Electric Company to sell the electricity from the news plant at of 12 cents per KW.

SDE, which has received support from the office of the Chief Scientist of Israel, Ministry of Industry and Trade, hope that the new plant will be the springboard for a larger expansion outside Israel.

“There was an intensive interest in S.D.E’s unique technology even before SDE had an operational model; however, now, when SDE has an operational model, I believe that the development and growth of the company will be unstoppable,” Inna Braverman International Marketing and business development Manager of the group of SDE companies said in a press release.

Among the factors the SDE says speaks in their advantage includes a competitive price: The erection cost of a 1MW S.D.E’s power station starts from $650,000 while a comparable station costs $1,500,000 from coal, $900,000 from natural gas, $3,000,000 from solar sources, and $1,500,000 from wind.”

The system that S.D.E has developed is able to supply 500 times more than the electricity requirements of the whole world population according the company.

While the possibility to create renewable energy from wave is huge, after all most of the planet is cover by water, the technology is only is still considered to be experimental.

The energy is produced by electricity generators placed on the surface of the sea and the output is determined by a combination of factors such as wave height, wavelength, wave speed and the density of the water.

The technology of producing electricity from sea waves is innovative and a leading method worldwide. Pollution and global warming as a result of fuel usage have taught the world that the largest world resource to create electricity is sea waves. The system has the highest efficiency in the world by the new method and is offered for a very attractive price. SDE had international patent and also patents pending." (source)