Recent data show Israel added 900 MW of solar PV capacity in 2024. The majority of the newly-added capacity stems from projects operating under merchant power purchase agreements (PPAs).
According to information published by Israel’s Electricity Authority, the country installed 900 MW of photovoltaic capacity and 11 MW of biogas capacity last year. This is about 200 MW less than the 1.1 GW of new PV capacity installed in 2023.
Israel’s official reports lack details about the different segments of its solar market, however Eitan Parnass, founder and director of Israel’s Green Energy Association, provided pv magazine with additional information.
Parnass noted a complete switch from tendered PV projects towards merchant photovoltaic and energy storage projects that operate via PPAs. This segment of the market drove Israel’s solar growth in 2024 and will continue doing so in the following years, argued Parnass.
Agrivoltaics is also an emerging segment of the Israeli solar market, he added. “There is already a first operational project, comprising 10 MW of PV and 40 MWh of storage, and we expect more commercial projects to come forward in the next two to three years,” Parnass noted. “Israel is well known for its agritech so agrivoltaics is embraced here by government and also farmers.”
There is no public data depicting how much rooftop solar is installed in the country. However, Parnass estimates that more than 60% of Israel’s installed PV capacity has dual-use, meaning solar is co-located with another land use, while about 40% consists of ground-mounted systems.
Residential photovoltaics tend to represent a small fraction of each year’s new solar capacity, however the Ministry of Energy and Infrastructure recently announced a 100,000 Solar Roofs Program aiming to add 1.6 GW of solar by 2030.
Asked whether Israel can achieve higher than about 1 GW of new solar per year in the future, Parnass commented that the main obstacle for this to happen is the country’s electricity grid, which he said would need to expand significantly and may take a few years. He added that energy storage is a vital issue in Israel and highlighted the country embracing the storage technologies as a potential solution for the further growth of renewable energies.
Sharing no electricity connection with its neighboring countries, Israel is considered a so-called ‘energy island’. In recent years, the country has expressed interest in linking its national grid with the electricity grids of Cyprus and Greece via the ‘Great Sea Interconnector’ subsea line.