Ormat Receives $29M Canadian Order

Ormat Technologies, Inc. (NYSE: ORA ) has announced that two of its wholly-owned subsidiaries have received supply and construction orders worth approximately US$29 million for 3 ORMAT Recovered Energy Generation (REG) power plants from an independent power producer (IPP) in Western Canada.

Each facility will have a capacity of 5 MW net and will convert into electricity the recovered waste heat from the exhaust of existing gas turbines. The 3 plants are expected to be commissioned in 2007 or early 2008.

The ORMAT REG facilities consist of ORMAT Energy Converters (OEC) based on Organic Rankine Cycle technology, which convert recovered heat to electric power without the need for any additional fuel or water. The OEC units are environmentally benign as they have no emissions of CO2 or NOX.

Lucien Y. Bronicki, Chairman of the Board and Chief Technology Officer of Ormat Technologies, said, “This agreement brings the total of REG on order above 60MW and provides further validation of the importance of recovered energy as one of Ormat’s growth engines. The Ormat line of REG systems responds to two objectives high on the energy policy agenda: energy efficiency and emission reduction. We are very pleased with our progress on this area and remain confident about Ormat’s prospects in the recovered energy arena going forward.”

Two similar ORMAT REG plants have been operating successfully — one on a TransCanada pipeline compressor station for more than six years with a second ORMAT REG plant operating inside an Enterprise Products gas processing plant, for more than 2 years. Recently this power technology has been recognized by SaskPower to qualify under its Environmentally Preferred Power (EPP) Program. Under this program, Ormat is constructing a 5 MW facility on behalf of NRGreen, which will sell the power to SaskPower under a long term Power Purchase Agreement (PPA).

In addition, four more projects on the Oneok (Northern Border) pipeline in the states of North and South Dakota are nearing completion. Power from these facilities (about 22 MW), owned by Ormat, will be sold under a long term PPA to Basin Electric. Finally, Ormat has started the construction of a similar facility on the Northwest (Williams) pipeline located in Sumas, WA. This project, when completed, will be owned by Ormat and will sell power to Puget Sound Energy (PSE) under a long term PPA.