Power/energy: A solar-pond power plant: Israel reviews an experiment which got under way more then a year ago: Will it prove a model for more like it?

After more than a quarter century of research, Israel has built a 7500-m2 salt pond and turned it into an electric power plant. The experimental 150-kW installation, which began operating in December 1979 in Ein Bokek, near the Dead Sea, collects and stores solar energy in water in which the salt concentration increases with depth. A low-temperature turbogenerator converts the thermal energy into electricity (Fig. 1).