Category: Electricity

Rapac is building two IPPs in the north of Israel for 80 million. The stations are valued at 1.2 billion shekels.

The Ramat Gavriel IPP station in Migdal HaEmek has an exclusive agreement to sell electricity, steam and water to Nilit. The power station in the Alon Tavor industrial zone will sell its electricity and steam to Tnuva.

Energean is due to supply the natural gas to both stations.

Rapac and American fund Denham Capital bought 57% of the power stations in equal shares from Delek in August 2012 for $5 million in cash and an additional $4-$6 million payment upon financial closure. In January 2014, they acquired another 11.2% each for $3.7 million and later exchanged shares with a third station they owned, leaving Rapac with both stations together with its partner Gat Energy. The turbines are being built by Siemens at a cost of 700 million NIS.

The stations were due to be completed in H2 2018 but Rapac’s Q2 statement that was published on Tuesday indicates that construction will continue until Q2 2019. The company claims that the delays are mainly the result of “work vis-a-vis IEC and negotiations with Siemens regarding the responsibility for the setbacks in the completion of the project.” Rapac also claims that it is eligible for late fees from Siemens, although Siemens itself has demanded payments for excess costs “at a sum that exceeds the late fees.”

According to Rapac, the delays have increased the costs of the projects by 72 million NIS.

Sorry, this entry is only available in עברית.

These are renewable energy power generators that don’t have to submit their generation program to the system operator. In Israel these include, solar, wind and biogas facilities.

The power generator facilities that are included under the must-run criteria, do not submit their generation program to the system operator / dispatcher. The system manager prepares the expected generation program of these power generators based on weather forecasts and past experience.

The efficiency of a station has nothing to do with how many KWS of electricity it can generate a year. The efficiency of a station has everything to do with how much gas/coal….. is required to generate each KW of electricity.

A 1 MW power station of 100% efficiency or of 50% efficiency will both have the capacity to generate 8760 MWHs a year. The difference between the two is that the 50% power station will need twice as much gas to generate the same amount of electricity.

1 MMBTU of gas is equal 293 KWH under conditions of 100% efficiency.

When gas is sold, it is sold as Higher Heating Value by the gas producers (HHV) whilst the power stations calculate it as Lower Heating Value (LHV). The difference between the two is about 10% (ranges between 9%-11% depending on if the calculation is done from HHV down to LHV or other way round).

Thus, from 293 KWH one needs to deduct 10% and we reach 265 KWHs of electricity.

If the efficiency of the power station is 50%, one needs twice as much gas to generate the same amount of KWHs, or in other words each MMBtu of gas can only generate 132.5 KWHs of electricity.

So if one has a 1 MWs power station that could in principle operate 100% of the time, this station would have a capacity of 8760 MWHs a year, or namely, 8,760,000 KWHs. If the station is 50% efficiency it can still generate the same 8,760,000 KWHs. But to calculate how much gas it needs to do this, one has to divide the 8,760,000 by 132.5 = 66,113 MMBtus (namely this is the amount of gas that is needed to operate that power station).

If a steam unit of 9,000 MW has an efficiency of 53% and an HHV/LHV conversion rate of 9%, it would amount to 0.1413 MWH/MMBtu and would need 63,688 MMBtus of gas an hour to operate.