Ormat Technologies

Ormat has been involved in the establishment and development of several companies:

Orbotech develops and manufactures automated optical inspection (AOI) systems for bare and assembled printed circuit boards and flat panel displays. The company's systems, imaging and computer-aided manufacturing technologies enable electronic manufacturers to achieve the increased yields and throughput essential for electronics production.

Orad Hi-Tec Systems Ltd. develops video and real-time image processing technologies for TV broadcasting, Internet, production studio and sports events.

Ormat's former parent company, Ormat Industries Ltd., developed an energy-efficient technology, OrCrude, for extracting crude oil from oil sands. The process is claimed to be more efficient than other technologies as it includes gasification, which substantially reduces the requirement for natural gas, typically the largest input cost in an in-situ oil sands project. The technology is used in the Long Lake project, a former joint venture between Nexen and OPTI Canada. In 2010, Ormat Industries sold all its holdings (5.1%) in OPTI Canada. In 2011, OPTI Canada was acquired by CNOOC Luxembourg S.à r.l, an indirect wholly owned subsidiary of CNOOC Limited.

In the 1980s Ormat built and operated one of the world's first power stations to produce electricity from solar energy, located just north of the Dead Sea in Israel. The plant utilized a solar pond, a large-scale solar thermal energy collector with integral heat storage. It was the largest operating solar pond ever built for electricity generation and operated until 1988. It had an area of 210,000 m2 and gave an electrical output of 5 MW.

After the decommissioning of the solar pond project, the firm was not active in the solar energy market until its entry into the Solar PV market.

The technology is optimized for use in geothermal energy generation, and the firm is the third largest geothermal producer in the United States. The technology is also suitable for recovered energy power generation, which converts waste heat from industrial processes into electricity that can be used on site or sold to power generation utilities. The firm's recovered energy technology was deployed in projects in Germany, Canada, India, USA, New Zealand and Japan.

The firm's core technology is the Ormat Energy Converter power generation unit. It converts low and medium temperature heat into electrical energy, with low or zero emission of CO2 and pollutants. The main components are a vaporizer/preheater, turbo-generator, air-cooled or water-cooled condenser, feed pump and controls. The firm has installed more than 900 MW of geothermal and recovered energy generation (REG) power units, based on this technology.

The company owns and operates geothermal power plants in US, Guatemala, Kenya, Honduras and Guadeloupe.