The Energy Ministry on Tuesday launched an interactive website showing the potential for solar energy generation on every roof, park, parking lot, sports ground and cemetery in Israel.
The system also calculates the profitability of installing solar panels, and channeling the electricity into the national grid.
The ministry hopes the platform will be used by everyone, from individual homeowners and solar panel companies to local and national planning authorities.
Formulated in partnership with the Survey of Israel, which maps the country, and the Israel Meteorological Service, it combines high-resolution aerial photographs with AI and sophisticated algorithms.
This enables the platform it to quantify the sun’s radiation in a particular location throughout the year and to identify trees, shade, and existing panels.
Yossi Dayan, the Energy Ministry’s director-general, said the platform was a nationally important tool for the government’s goal of generating 30% of electricity from renewable energy, primarily the sun, by 2030.
The Energy Ministry is working on a combination of ground-based solar fields and dual-use facilities.
Solar panels in the Negev, southern Israel, November 16, 2017. (Moshe Shai/FLASH90)
It says the former is cheaper: Recent tenders have closed with prices of less than seven agorot per kilowatt hour (1 kilowatt of power sustained for one hour).
In dual-use facilities, solar panels are installed on places such as roofs that are already in use. These have the advantages of not needing extra land, which is in short supply, and bringing electricity production closer to consumption, without the need for expensive power lines and other infrastructure.
They also distribute the electricity production system among many users, making it more resilient in case of an attack.
The roof of a building at 7 HaRav Kook Street in central Bat Yam. The table provides data on the roof’s potential for solar panels. (Energy Ministry)
Taking the example of a building at 17 HaRav Kook Street in central Bat Yam, the platform calculates the roof surface at 894 square meters (9,623 square feet), of which 588 square meters (6,330 square feet) are suitable for a 78-kilowatt solar system. The roof enjoys 1,668 hours of solar radiation a year. It has the potential to generate 130,771 kilowatt hours annually.
The user is directed to a calculator to type in the location of the roof, the supply (in this case, 78 kilowatts), and the number of hours of annual sunshine. It works out that the building’s owners can make NIS 61,800 ($17,200) per year by channeling this electricity into the grid.
Buildings and sports grounds in the southern city of Eilat. The brighter the yellow, the more intense the radiation. (Energy Ministry)
The new platform provides information on all buildings, residential and otherwise, and four types of facilities that could benefit from the shading that solar panels provide: parks, parking lots, sports grounds, and cemeteries.
The platform is an initial version, Energy Ministry officials told a press briefing on Monday. In the coming weeks, the ministry will publish the total solar energy potential for neighborhoods, local authorities, and the country, broken down into the five categories. Cross-referencing will allow a local authority to work out the potential for panels over all cemeteries within its boundaries, for example.
An aerial view of the city of Acre in northern Israel color codes parking lots, sports grounds, cemeteries and parks with the potential for shading through solar panels. (Energy Ministry)
Officials said that they were working on integrating the cost of solar panel installation into the platform. While the profit could be easily calculated based on tariffs, the costs are more complicated, depending on factors such as the type of roof, they said.
They also said they were discussing translating the site into other languages.
A publicity campaign explaining what members of the public need to do to install solar panels on private or residential housing is planned for the coming weeks.
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