In 2009 the government of Israel set a target of 10% of electricity to be generated from renewable sources by 2020. Under this framework, the government policies supporting construction of renewable electricity power plants are enacted through issuing of tenders and authorizing the Public Utility Authority – Electricity to set feed-in tariffs.
In light of the significant drop in price of Photovoltaic panels in recent years, planned thermo-solar projects have tended to change into PV technology instead. This brings up the issue of thermo-solar’s added benefits over PV, such as energy storage capabilities and hybridization (using fossil fuels when solar radiation is low or not available).
Out of the known renewable energy sources, solar has the most prominent potential in Israel. Israeli companies have been and still are in the forefront of solar energy technologies R&D, especially in thermo-solar. One of the Forum’s reoccurring discussion topic revolved around the comparison between thermo-solar and PV technologies.
