With oil prices hovering around $70 a barrel, Solel, an Israeli solar energy company that nearly shut down over a decade ago, is finally seeing an upsurge in demand for its thermal energy technology. In June, Solel announced its biggest contract yet, a $45-million deal with Florida Power and Light to replace the heat collecting elements at seven of the Florida company’s nine solar trough power plants in California’s Mojave Desert. The solar trough power plants produce some 350 megawatts of electricity.

The revival of solar-trough technology is just the latest example of solar’s surging fortunes. Solar trough technology uses sun-tracking collectors, which concentrate sunlight on steel pipes that contain a heat transfer fluid. The fluid is pumped through heat exchangers to generate steam at temperatures of up to 400 degrees celsius, which in turn powers a turbine to produce electricity.

The California power plants were built in the late 1980s by Luz, Solel’s predecessor which went bankrupt in 1991. A Belgian-led investor group interested in furthering the Israeli technology acquired its assets. “We’ve invested tens of millions of dollars since then to improve the efficiency of the technology and have dramatically reduced the price,” says Solel CEO Avi Brenmiller.

Later this year, in fact, Solel plans to introduce its next generation solar collector, Solel-6, which it claims is 50 percent more efficient than those currently in use in California. “The combination of improved efficiency and the rise in energy prices had reduced the gap between solar and fossil fuel power plants,” says Shimon Seroussi, co-managing director of Eco-Energy, an Israeli based energy-consulting firm.

If it works as advertised, expect Solel to build on its momentum. The California project is the third announced by Solel since the beginning of the year.The others are in Nevada and Spain. The Bet Shemesh, Israel company is predicting a tenfold increase in revenues this year to $35 million because of the growing interest in solar power—proving that in tech, not every profitable idea is a new idea.

Contact the Writer: JKho@RehDerring.com