Twenty years ago, Luz International Ltd. ("Luz") revolutionized the power world by proving that solar energy could reliably produce commercially competitive electricity during the heavy use, peak load, day time hours. Between 1984 and 1991, Luz designed, developed, built, financed, and operated nine Solar Electricity Generating Stations (SEGS) in California’s Mojave Desert generating a total of 354 MW.

The Luz plants have generated more than 11,000 GWh and produced more than 1.7 billion dollars of revenue over the past 22 years. These plants are still generating electricity to the Southern California Edison grid and operating profitably. No other company has come close to the Luz track record.

The Luz solar power revolution was accomplished during a time of high fuel costs, high electricity prices, and a favorable governmental and regulatory climate. These conditions have returned, galvanizing the technical and management team that designed, financed, and built the original Luz solar plants to reassemble in the new company LUZ II.

The original Luz projects were based on solar thermal parabolic trough technology, which focused sunlight on a pipe carrying synthetic oil. Since that time, LUZ II has developed a new, proprietary design based on Distributed Power Towers (DPT). This new DPT 550C technology increases solar-to-thermal conversion efficiency from about 35% (for the older parabolic trough technology) to above 40%. At the same time, the new design significantly reduces overall equipment and project costs. The team is also in the process of developing a second generation DPT. The DPT 1200C technology will increase solar-to-thermal efficiency to approximately 50%, and further lower overall project costs.

LUZ II was founded by Mr. Arnold Goldman, who was also the founder of the original Luz. The company employs key engineering and business development personnel who were central to the success of the original Luz projects. They have been joined by a group of talented, young engineers.