ABSTRACT
If the harnessing of solar energy did not actually begin in the desert its use in that milieu certainly dates back to the earliest traces of recorded history. The Negev desert contains several settlements that are two decades or more in age. They hail from an era of cheap imported oil, with the result that housing and plumbing have little if any in the way of thermal insulation and domestic water is often heated by electricity. One employs the use of large-area lenses or mirrors to concentrate the sun’s rays on to a comparatively small area. The other utilizes high vacuum techniques in order to reduce heat losses and so enable the solar collector to operate at higher temperatures. Turning however towards the new generation of high temperature solar collectors, one square meter of such technology is capable of contributing about 2,400 MJ or 670 kWh per six-month growing season.
