Green!! Climb on the Roof
“Territories and clean energy are two resources that a state of Israel suffers from its shortage, however shortage of Land is a fact, and therefore increasing production of renewable Energy from our resources depends only in us.
The lack of these two resources creates an equation; it’s clearly noticeable with the delays to install Midsize Solar Systems on Fields due to the Land Zonings designations change required. It turns out that although it was decided to approve midsize projects that can yield 5 megawatts and overall 300 megawatts per annum the delay is due to Land Zonings designations, Real Estate Tax issues and others.
The truth of the matter is that Israel has the means to resolve this issue for now and deal with the Land issues in the interim: Yes the solution is ROOF-TOPS Solar panels don’t require land fields, they can be installed on existing roof tops of warehouses, factories malls, agriculture buildings and others.
The limit of 300 megawatts can be achieved easily today jut from the building owners that have already expressed interest in installing Systems on the roof tops of their buildings, just one sample: Kibbutz Yotvata has installed the maximum allowed small Solar systems to produce 50 Kilowatts of electricity on only 10% of its Cow- Shades, regardless of its ability to use other roof tops in the Kibbutz like Factories and other buildings.
Unfortunately the kibbutzim which are currently leading the usages and installation of Solar Systems suffering from another issue, instead of regulating the amount of electricity the kibbutzim can produce use combined as a large population and many factories and agriculture business, the regulation limit them to use only 50 kilowatts as if its 1 entity, although it’s clear the kibbutzim have more than 1 entities and spread over many industries at each kibbutz and obviously self use much more electricity than a single entity.
The state of Israel and the electricity authority must face realty like many other countries with regards to solar Energy overall and Midsize Solar Panel’s locations on top of Roofs specifically.
Allowing the installation of Midsize Solar Systems on roofs will completely change Solar Energy Usage from symbolic and negligible to significantly enough to bring Israel to achieve its goal and transform the use of conventional energy to Renewable energy avoiding bureaucracy of land use changes required.
A state of Israel has began vigorous steps forward last years in renewable Energy Developments hopefully alongside the goodwill, we’ll also see creative thinking to achieve our dream and remove our dependency in energy pollute our plant.
Writer is the CEO of Solarit Doral – among the leaders of Solar Panels industry.