The storm over comments by Noga Electricity Systems Management CEO Shaul Goldstein that Israel’s electricity grid is not prepared for a protracted war continues to make waves. There have been calls to oust Goldstein after he told a conference in Sderot last week that living in Israel without electricity for 72 hours would make living here impossible and that Hezbollah could easily hit Israel’s national grid.
Noga chairman Sami Turjeman has called for Goldstein’s dismissal but a former senior official at the Ministry of Energy has said that Goldstein’s remarks were correct. He told "Globes," "He is right but he could have expressed it differently. We should not deal with the question of whether Shaul spoke diplomatically or not, but with the question of whether the electricity grid can be trusted."
The same senior former senior official points out that the electricity grid has many shortfalls on the scenario of a full-scale war with Hezbollah that Goldstein spoke of. "A country at war does not start fighting over who said what, but prepares the grid for the future," he adds. According to him, Israel should draw an example from Ukraine, which in the war against Russia lost about half of its electricity production capacity - including the Russian occupation of the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant: "Ukraine's president Volodymyr Zelenskyy is worried about energy security."
Following concern for Kiev's energy security, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) announced about three weeks ago the provision of €300 million financing to Ukraine, for the restoration of electricity production capabilities. In general, it seems that Zelenskyy and his people are already dealing with everything that Israel needs to do: decentralizing the energy grid, including implementing massive production of renewable energy, dispersing production units and establishing micro-grids.
"In order to create energy protection for public buildings, including, for example, health fund clinics, there should be solar panels on the roof," says the former official. "Even Ukraine, with its little sun, is going in that direction. This will give immunity to the electricity system, like in Gaza, where there is no active power plant but there is electricity, because solar energy is connected to the neighborhood." In this way, it is possible to create many microgrids (tiny electric grids), with which every building can become an energy island. Among other things, for this mission, the EU donated to Ukraine, through its civil defense body, 15,000 solar panels from a Swiss company.
Israel does not currently suffer from a chronic shortage of electricity, although such a shortage may arise between 2028-2029. At the same time, a problem that is already chronic in the local energy industry is the failure to meet production targets from renewable energy that the state has set for itself. The target for 2020 was met only in 2022 (10%) and in 2023 it reached 12.5%, while Israel wants to reach 20% in 2025 - a target that will probably not be achieved.
Alongside the problem of the lack of diversification of production sources, there is an equally serious problem during war, of the lack of decentralization of locations. The State of Israel is based on a large number of large power plants and the absence of small power plants. In Ukraine, they already understood the need to decentralize small production units, and therefore received from the EU reserves more than 1,000 microgeneration units, which are based on diesel. These are more polluting when they are activated, but the use of many tiny units that are scattered makes it difficult for the enemy to damage the electricity supply.
"If mobile turbines are scattered in all kinds of places, then the situation is more secure," explains the former senior official at the Ministry of Energy. "The future lies in renewable energies, but we also need to diversify the mix. The State of Israel does not have enough production capacity, and the supply to Gush Dan is also not diversified enough."
He calls on the Israeli government to learn from Zelenskyy and create a national emergency plan. "It is possible to deploy solar panels in cemeteries, including near Gush Dan. In addition, the State of Israel relies on natural gas production, and we saw on October 7 how they shut down the Tamar rig for a month. The rigs are based on foreign workers, who after being rockets are being launched are expected to soon want to leave. We must think about how to store the gas and diversify it as well, we need to prepare the grid in a different way."
Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on June 25, 2024.
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