A requests is made by Eleven firms and groups to Israel’s national Public Utility Authority Electricity (PUA) to build large solar energy generation installations in areas near the Gaza Strip, solar thermal and photovoltaic.

Two solar power plants ” Gaza Envelope” communities will use solar thermal technology to generate180 MW of electricity along with nine others utilizing large-scale photovoltaic solar installation for a combined output of 500 MW.

The Authority’s map shows that 25 out of the 87 electricity generating conditional licenses were awarded to medium-size installations to be constructed in the Gaza Envelope. This area solar fields will supply 70 megawatts, more than 50% of the electricity to be produced under the conditional licenses awarded so far.

Nearly all the planned solar fields will be constructed in the periphery, and non are planned for the Dan region or Jerusalem. “We expected to see the entire south of the country covered in solar fields, but, to our surprise, we discovered that deployment is not uniform, with the Gaza Envelope standing out, compared with the Beersheva area,” Public Utility Authority – Electricity licensing head Moshe Sheetrit said.

In the future, the medium-size installations will combine with the large ones. Till now 11 applications for large solar power generation installation licenses have been submitted to the Authority, amounting to some 500 megawatts altogether. Two large installations will use solar thermal technology to provide180 MW, while nine will be large photo-voltaic installations. However, the plan for the large installations was frozen at the direction of the ministerial committee for renewable energy, after it accepted the Ministry of Finance’s proposal for a renewed discussion in the government of the future of policy for encouraging use of renewable energy.