“Israel can transfer all essential facilities to solar electricity within six months”

“There are ten central power plants operating in Israel. Damage to some of them would not mean a week without electricity, but a month, months, maybe even six months,” Dr. Daniel Mader, an expert in energy and the environment, and a founding partner of the consulting company, tells ‘Daver’ SP Interface “You can turn the ten not into a hundred, but into a million.”

Madar spoke at a conference of the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) about two weeks ago about electricity infrastructure during war. At the conference, it was said that the Alta scenario, which has a moderate probability, was chosen as the reference scenario for the war with Hezbollah, and foresees 24-48 hours without electricity in the whole country, and another 72 hours of regional power outages. “This scenario is also for those who need the electricity the most – the emergency services and the army,” Medar clarifies. “The common man could certainly spend a week or more without a power cut.”

Mader’s solution is a massive shift to solar cells and local storage. “If we hurry, then even with the bureaucracy we can make sure that all the essential facilities in Israel – bases, hospitals, essential factories – will be connected to solar energy within six months. Even if you hit a solar facility, there are a million more. Even if you hit a solar field, you only hit it Some”.

“It’s good that the stations are damaged, but how many times will they be able to switch?”

The Alta scenario is a situation in which Israel is in a severe energy crisis due to damage to the electricity grid, and as a result large parts of the population are left without electricity for days at a time. Such a scenario will harm not only the war effort, but also every aspect of civilian life – elevators, gas pumps, oxygen for ventilators, and more.

“It’s not just an injury to production, the transportation network is also injured,” Madar explains. “The electricity grid in Israel is fine, and is organizing for an emergency, and kudos to it for that, but the classic model is fragile. The electric company has practiced and shown that they can replace a damaged substation within 24 hours. That’s great, but how many times will they be able to replace? Three? Five? These are super stations Complex and expensive, and it is impossible to produce more units in Israel.”

Although the electric company trains independently for emergency situations, in the last decade it is responsible for fewer and fewer power plants in Israel, due to the privatization of the electric network. Just a week ago Eshkol station was transferred to private hands – the largest so far. These companies usually do not prepare for events on a national scale.

“Other sites can also be easily damaged, such as gas or coal storage stations, ports – in a war with so many missiles, it is not unreasonable that an ‘island state’ scenario will materialize, and companies will stop sending ships here for fear of being damaged. We depend on coal and diesel. In such a scenario , the emergency reserves will run out within a week or two, if they are not damaged themselves. And that’s without talking about our dependence on the countries that export us coal – Russia, South Africa, Colombia, which just wants to close the tap to us.”

“If the Gazans can do it, can’t we?”

“Which country had the highest energy immunity in the Middle East on the eve of the war?” Madar asks. “To Gaza. Why? Because they have no security. We cut them off here, they cut them off there. So they internalized the revolution happening in the world, and bought solar cells and storage cells from the Internet. At the beginning of the war, we had ten stations that needed to be destroyed to knock us down energetically, and they had 15,000. It’s such a durable and decentralized technology that you have to literally destroy all the solar cells. If the Gazans can do it, can’t we?”

Solar technology is developing in the world at an enormous speed. Prices are in a continuous decline of tens of percent. In Israel, unfortunately, there are currently no companies that manufacture solar cells, but the import is also not too expensive, and the installation, according to Madar, is simple. “The technology has been there for 15 years, but when we brought it to the Ministry of Defense seven years ago, and proposed installing storage facilities at the bases, they said they would only consider it if there was funding from the Ministry of Energy. We have a problem, we are in love with natural gas. The public in Israel, too, after all the years of not He had resources, especially the state. But the world is no longer there.”

In recent decades, Israel has moved to a very common use of natural gas as a solution to the more polluting coal and diesel, and today it serves as its cleanest and most reliable source. “But we can no longer rely on it. Not climatically, because it is still polluting, and certainly not security-wise. Do you know how easy it is to cut a gas pipeline? On October 8, a Chinese ship cut, accidentally or not, the gas pipeline between Estonia and Finland. Simple Go without lifting anchor, or blow up the rigs. It’s also easy to destroy a substation with small arms, we’ve seen pictures of just radicals in America shooting a substation and disabling it.”

So why not move?
“Just fixation. They don’t understand how much the world has changed.”

There are those who will say that there is no room, there is not enough space.
“Nonsense, there is enough land for energy independence. The best: on places that are already built – houses, factories, fences, roads. Dual-use agricultural land.”

Dual use in agriculture, Madar explains, is a method in which agricultural land is used both for cultivation and as solar land, in an intelligent combination of plants that need a lower amount of sunlight and dynamic receptors.

“Dual use is really more expensive, but it is better from an environmental point of view, because it does not destroy more land, and is closer to the place where it is needed in the settlement areas, and therefore does not waste new areas.

“It is true that entire cities cannot feed themselves by themselves, but need fields like this nearby, but it is possible to install a lot of energy on roofs within a city. People who have it, can take care of themselves today for installations on the roofs, which allow them both to be almost independent and to sell energy In the evening, there are entire kibbutzim that have chosen, without support from the state, to generate solar independence for themselves. Today, with a little more regulatory support, this means that today, if they reach the event of darkness can go off the grid, free up a lot of electricity. If the state supported this, all the kibbutzim could be there today, and turn critical resources to the electricity grid.”

Where are solar panels made?
“There is no company in Israel today that produces panels. In most of the Western world there is none, like many other heavy industries. The main places of production are in China and similar countries, but recently there are Western countries in the world that are starting to start their heavy industry again, such as the USA and parts of Europe.

So does it make sense to start moving beyond solar energy? You said it could take three years.
“Certainly. Even if the majority of the economy cannot be switched to solar energy in six months, within a few months it is possible to make all the essential bases and facilities, or at least most of them, energy independent. This means that in a war the army will be able to fight, and the hospitals will work. Today, hospitals have Diesel for 72 hours for their generators. And after 72 hours, in an island state scenario, they may have a few days, but power outages can last a week, two weeks, or months.

“The state could have taken care of solar energy and a storage cell for all these places a long time ago. This matter has enormous strategic implications. Israel must energetically prepare for a war with Iran or Hezbollah. The evacuation of the north causes great economic damage, but a month without electricity for a third of the country is billions in damage to the economy. This means that the State of Israel is deterred, and needs to consider its steps from this situation. This is a weak point that we should have addressed a long time ago. It is better now than ever.”