Israel is constructing the world's tallest solar tower to harness solar energy. This is part of its Ashalim project, located in the Negev desert.
The centre of the Ashalim solar tower, it will be 250 metres tall and will be encircled by 50 thousand mirrors called heliostats.
Solar towers use different method conventional photovoltaic solar panels. These convert sunlight directly into electricity. The solar towers use solar thermal method in which 1000s of mirrors focus the sun's rays into the tower, heating the boiler that creates steam to spin the turbine and generate electricity.
Ashalim project is made up of three fields each with a different solar technology. Together, these solar fields will be Israel’s largest renewable energy project after completion by 2018.
They will generate some 310 MW of power that is, about 1.6% of the Israel’s energy needs enough for about 130,000 households, or roughly 5% of Israel’s population.
