Background The Gaza Strip in Palestine is currently facing a serious electrical power deficit due to the local political situation. In addition, the main source of energy in Gaza Strip is traditional fossil fuel which is environmentally harmful. To ensure that electrical power in the Gaza Strip can be maintained continuously without any day-long power failures is a challenging task for decision-makers. The lack of reliable electrical power has motivated the inhabitants of the Gaza Strip to adopt an alternative source of energy which is reliable, sustainable, environmentally friendly and abundantly exists. Therefore, they decided to implement solar energy systems to power their houses in order to replace or to complement the traditional sources of energy. This has motivated the current study which aims to find out whether solar energy can be an alternative source of energy to the conventional energy for domestic use in the Gaza Strip to sustain inhabitants’ daily life. This has been tested by studying the readiness and attitudes of household people in the Gaza Strip to adopt solar energy in their homes. This work is a novel study in its contents. According to the authors’ knowledge, this is one of few studies considering this topic. Methods To understand the reasons for successful solar energy system adoption by individual households in Gaza, the authors have created an electronic questionnaire. The dependent variable is chosen to be the adoption of energy, and independent variables are the environmental benefit, the cost of adoption of solar energy, and the economic savings of solar energy measured. The electronic questionnaire consists of two parts: part one consists of personal questions; the second part consists of 22 items on a five-point Likert scale and the studied sample population consists of the 10% of the Al-Shifa Medical Complex employees (1819 employees). The electronic questionnaires were electronically circulated to the study sample. The data were then collected and analyzed using an SPSS program. Results The authors found that only 19.5% of the studied sample population have installed solar energy systems on their houses. The results show that some factors, including the governorate in which employees are living, house ownership, total cost of energy/month, available space to install the solar panels, and the desire to share the cost with neighbors did not affect the decision to use solar energy. On the contrary, the type of house and the knowledge of renewable energy influenced the decision. Compared to previous studies, we also found that knowledge is an important factor in implementing renewable energy (Zakaria et al. in Earth Environ Sci 268:012105. https://doi.org/10.1088/1755-1315/268/1/012105, 2019, Szakály et al. in Energies 14:1–25. https://doi.org/10.3390/en14010022, 2021). Though our study did not reveal an impact of cost of installing the system on making the decision to adopt renewable energy (Assali et al. in Renew Energ 136:254–263. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.renene.2019.01.007, 2019), we will it regard it as an important factor. Conclusion The adoption of solar energy in Gaza is limited. The kind of the house and the knowledge of renewable energy are imperative to increase utilization of solar energy by households in Gaza. Therefore, it is important to start a public information campaign on the advantages of solar energy through the universities by giving classes to all university students and/or by giving general talks for the public. To conquer the limiting factors, the public authority ought to consider the framework and support the neighborhood occupants.
This work is motivated by the need in overcoming the electricity crisis in Gaza, which is initiated due to political reasons and the spread of COVID‐19. Building quarantine centers is one of the most important means used in combating the COVID‐19, but connecting these centers to the electricity distribution network at the appropriate time is not always possible and increases the burden on the local utility company. This article proposed a hybrid off‐grid energy system (HES) to effectively energize the quarantine COVID‐19 center in Gaza economically and environmentally. To achieve this aim, the estimated load profile of the quarantine center is fed to the HOMER‐Pro program. In addition, the various systems components are introduced to the program, then modeled, and optimized. The developed approach was tested using a real case study considering realistic input data. HOMER‐Pro program is used to simulate and optimize the system design. The results revealed the potential of the HES to provide environment‐friendly, cost‐effective, and affordable electricity for the studied quarantine center, as compared to just the diesel generators system. For the considered case study, it is found that the PV‐wind‐diesel generators HES can cover the connected load with the lowest cost ($ 0.348/kWh) in comparison to other possible HES structures. Taking into consideration the price of harmful emissions, the wining system shows a reduction of 54.89% of the cost of energy (CoE) compared to other systems. For the considered case study, it is found that a combination of 150 kW PV, 200 kW wind, and two diesel generators with capacities of 500 and 250 kW can hold 100% of the electrical load required to keep the quarantine COVID‐19 center in operation. The initial capital cost of this HES is $510,576 where the share of wind energy, solar PV, inverter, and diesel‐electric generators are $320,000, $83,076, $25,000, and $82,500, respectively. The replacemen cost ($55,918) is due to diesel generators. The total operation and maintainance cost (O&M) is $268,737, that is, 25.6% for wind turbines, 1.2% for inverters, and 70.7% for diesel electric generators. The PV/wind/diesel generators HES generate 1,659,038 kWh of electricity. The total energy requirement of 1,442,553 kWh, which means a surplus of 212,553 kWh of energy/year. The total energy (kWh) is an integration of energy sources which are 427,276 (25.8%), 274,500 (16.5%), and 857,263 (57.7%), due to wind, solar and diesel generators respectively. The cost of yearly consumed fuel is $437,828.769. The payback period for the winning system is 1.8 years. Finally, it is proved that the developed approach gives a reasonable solution to the decision‐makers to find a fast, economic and reliable solution to energize the quarantine centers.
Background: Gaza Strip in Palestine is facing a major power deficiency problem due to local political situation. Thus, powering Gaza Strip without blockage whole day is a challenging task for decision maker. Lack of electrical power required inhabitants of Gaza Strip to implement solar energy systems to power their homes to replace or to complement the traditional sources of energy. To understand the success of solar system adoption at household in Gaza, authors built an electronic questionnaire. The dependent variable is chosen to be the adoption of energy and independent variables are environmental benefit, the cost of adoption of solar energy, and the market value of solar energy measured. The electronic questionnaire consists of two parts: part one consists of personal questions; second part is 22 items on a five- point Likert scale. The study sample consists of the 10% of the study population which are Al-Shifa Medical Complex employees (1819 employees). The electronic questionnaires are electronically circulated to the study sample. Then data is collected and analyzed using SPSS program. Results: The authors found that only 19.5% of the sample install solar energy systems on their houses. The results show that some factor including governorate in which employees are living, house ownership, total cost of energy/month, space to install the space to install the solar panels, and the desire to share the cost with neighbor unaffected the decision to use solar energy. Contrary, the type of house, knowledge of renewable energy impacted the decision. Conclusion: The adoption of solar energy in Gaza is limited. Type of house and knowledge of renewable energy are important to spread using of solar energy at houses in Gaza. Therefore, it is important to spread the knowledge of solar energy through universities by giving classes to all university students or by giving general lecture. To overcome the other two factors, the government should adopt the system and support the local inhabitants.
A new off-grid Hybrid Energy System (HES) for Dier El Balah quarantine center (middle Gaza Strip, Palestine) that was built to host the infected Corona virus (COVID-19) people is studied. The proposed system is made up of three energy sources mainly photovoltaic (PV), wind, and a diesel generator. The HES is developed to adequately supply a load of 3952 KW/day. The technical and economic considerations are presented. HOMER program is used to develop an optimal system from the practical view point. The results revealed the potential of the HES to provide environment friendly, cost-effective and affordable electricity for the Dier El Balah quarantine center, as compared to using only diesel generators with lowest COE equals 0.348 US$/kWh.
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