Ashalim: following sunlight from mirrors to a steam turbine

The Megalim tower shows a different way of turning the Negev's sunlight into electricity.

Select an underlined term for a short explanation.

At Ashalim in the Negev, the Megalim power station gathers sunlight around a central tower. Noy Fund, the plant's owner, says operation began in 2019. This is the Plot B project: a useful name to remember because Ashalim contains different solar installations. Its story begins with mirrors, and reaches the electricity grid through heat and a turbine.

Concentrated solar power directs sunlight onto a receiver. The US Department of Energy explains that the collected heat can drive a turbine or engine to generate electricity. In a tower arrangement, mirrors surround a raised receiver. The solar field therefore performs the heat-collection part of the process; the electricity-generating machinery uses the thermal energy it delivers.

The SolarPACES project database hosted by NLR lists 50,600 heliostats and a 240-metre tower at Megalim. It identifies water as the receiver's working fluid and a steam power cycle. Those details make the route easier to follow: the mirrors concentrate incoming light, the receiver captures its heat, and steam carries energy into the power-generating cycle.

The same database lists 121 MW of nominal capacity. Nominal capacity describes the plant's rated power; it is different from the amount of electricity delivered over a year. The database's annual generation entry is explicitly an expectation. Actual performance would require dated production records, with operating conditions and outages taken into account. A tall tower or a large mirror count cannot supply that missing measurement.

Megalim gives readers a concrete place to learn how several engineering systems cooperate: moving mirrors, a receiver and a steam turbine each have a different job. When comparing it with another Israeli project, the useful starting point is the technology and the project boundary. From there, a fair comparison can examine measured electricity, timing and costs over the same period, rather than rely on a single striking feature.