In a significant development, Israel's national water company Mekorot announced that energy company Doral, specializing in renewable energy projects, has won the tender for installing Photovoltaic systems with a capacity of up to 75 megawatts on the national water carrier. This project will see the installation of green electricity production systems along a 16 km section of the Nettofa Canal, which links the Sea of Galilee to the Eshkol reservoir's water filtration facility.
The tender, initiated last August, involves a complex engineering effort combining dual-use projects with electricity storage. The project will be built in stages, with the addition of electricity storage facilities to provide power during afternoon and evening hours. This initiative is the first stage of a broader plan by Mekorot to outfit its facilities with solar systems for renewable energy production.
According to Mekorot and Doral, this dual-use projects on existing infrastructure will decentralize energy production sources and enhance green electricity output. Mekorot plans to extend these efforts to wastewater reservoirs, with a preliminary assessment indicating a potential to generate hundreds of megawatts of electricity, equivalent to several conventional power plants.
Yossi Jacobi, Mekorot's VP of Engineering and Innovation, stated: "Any additional investment in streamlining and reducing our energy costs will contribute to reducing operating costs, diversify the sources of electricity supply, significantly reduce the company's carbon footprint, and help meet the state's goals."
Adv. Avital Ofek, director of Doral Israel operations, also hilighted the importance of utilizing land efficiently in Israel, a country with limited land resources. "In a small and dense country like Israel, the land is a limited resource and therefore the dual utilization of the land and the establishment of dual-use projects such as the groundbreaking project on top of the national carrier, constitutes a necessary need to transition to renewable energies while preserving other land uses such as agricultural development," Ofek explained.
Minister of Energy and Infrastructure Eli Cohen added that the solar facilities project on the national carrier integrates the water and electricity sectors, aiming to increase solar energy usage. "We are carrying out many actions in order to meet our goals for electricity production from renewable energies, something that will increase Israel's energy independence, reduce air pollution, and enable a competitive price for the consumer," Cohen concluded.
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