Israel's solar energy pioneer did everything but make money
It was Tabor’s inventions that put Israel on the map as a global power player in the solar energy field.
In 1961, alongside his partner, engineer Lucien Bronicki, he presented the Organic Rankine Cycle turbine. “Most turbines work at high temperature (the higher the temperature, the better they were),” Tabor explains, “but we worked together on developing a low temperature turbine. This turned out to be a winner,” he smiles. The invention, though, didn’t catch on in the market. According to The Energy Library, “cheap fossil fuel prevented its widespread adoption.”
Almost all Israeli households nowadays have solar-heated water tanks based on the Tabor Selective Surface. Even the solar panels built in California’s Mojave Desert, the largest solar power installation in the world, are based on his work. “The big things which are going on all over the world, such as the solar cells made in China, are all based on his basic work,” explains his wife Viviane. Yet Tabor made no profit.
Whereas Tabor was gifted with an inventor’s mind (the Israeli Nikola Tesla, if you will), it was his partner, engineer Lucien Bronicki who had the mind for business. Bronicki, like an Israeli Thomas Edison, went on to find a business application for the low temperature turbine and created Ormat Industries. Tabor concedes: “He has more business sense than I do, so he turned it into a very profitable business for Israel.”Tabor invented a hybrid car 40 years before Toyota (because solar-only cars were too slow and too expensive to operate).
The one thing Tabor didn't do is make money.
Unfortunately, the answer might be “make money.” Tabor lived to create and see his country succeed; but he never truly did that for himself. As a result, now, at 96, he lives as he always lived: humbly, quietly, still thinking. He might go down in history as a name, a name which the books will tell us is very important, but which we won’t be able to put a face to.
When NoCamels asked Tabor what he is most proud of, he replied: “Don’t know. Ask my wife.” Viviane said: “I would say creating awareness of clean energy and ridding ourselves of the complete dependence on oil. When we first got here, people thought he was crazy. Yet he created awareness which now everybody takes for granted.”
Tabor: “She’s absolutely right on that.”He's 96-years old bli ayin hara, he's happily married, he's not impoverished. Sounds to me like he's doing okay.
Read the whole thing.
Labels: Israeli high tech
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 7:47 AM
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