Solar panels

A solar panel in Gaza (I didn’t take this photo)

A solar panel near a tent in the Gaza Strip. A picture by Getty Images

Khaled Zeyada 🇵🇸 from Rafah @khaled

Hello everyone ☀️☀️☀️ This is your friend Khaled from Rafah, #Gaza Strip, #Palestine. How are you doing today? How was your day? I hope you’re well and the sun shines over your head, warms your heart and gives you a smile!

Today I’d like to talk to you about electricity in Gaza, and solar panels!

Did you know that Gaza used to have the highest density of rooftop solar panels in the world, before the current genocidal massacre? It’s truly a remarkable place.

Gaza is blessed with a lot of sunshine throughout the year and altogether a nice Mediterranean climate. It’s a very sunny place, so it makes a lot of sense to use solar energy here.

Gaza has also been subjected to a siege since 2007 (when I was 3 years old). There are very persistent electricity shortages and power cuts for many years, exacerbated by blockades and damage to infrastructure. For households and businesses, switching to solar often reduces the cost compared to running diesel generators or paying for unpredictable grid electricity.

My family used to have a house in Rafah, and we were equipped with solar panels! It’s a very beautiful piece of technology.

A diagram of the constituents of a solar panel. I explain them in the article.

For the nerdy engineers among us: solar panels consist in two layers of silicon: one enriched with phosphorus (N-doped), and one enriched with boron (P-doped).

Silicon is made out of sand, it’s the semiconductor that forms the structure of photovoltaic cells. It allows electrons to be excited by sunlight (but they don’t move on their own).

Phosphorus is added to one layer of silicon. It adds many extra electrons, and it makes the layer of silicon negative-type. Phosphorus comes from mining, or also from guano (seabird excrements). Boron is added to the other layer of silicon. It adds many electron holes (places where electrons are missing). It makes the layer positive-type. Boron is a mined mineral.

And then there’s the junction where n-type and p-type silicon meet. At this boundary, electrons from the n-layer side diffuse to the p-type layer, and an electric field forms.

It’s very clever, it only relies on light, and it’s inexhaustible.

A photo of the roof of hospital Nasser in Khan Yunis before 2023. It's covered with solar panel

Solar installations are critical for essential health services: they have supported hospitals (for instance via a solar power plant at hospital Nasser in Khan Yunis funded with Japanese aid), helping reduce reliance on fuel-powered generators and keeping vital services running. They have supported hospitals, health-care facilities, businesses (bakeries, fish farms), start-ups, co-working spaces, etc.

This photo shows the roof of hospital Nasser before 2023.

Phones charging on a solar powered outlet.

Solar energy also offers many Gazans a more stable, cleaner, and more cost-effective alternative to fuel-based generators or erratic grid power — especially for lighting, charging phones, powering small appliances, or supporting essential services.

A Palestinian burns plastic waste to produce alternative fuel amid scarcity as the Israel-Hamas conflict continues, in northern Gaza Strip, September 5, 2024. REUTERS/Mahmoud Issa

In the genocidal war, people have been burning plastic a lot to make fuel. This emits very thick, black, cancer-inducing smokes that are extremely unhealthy for all Gazans. Many orphans make a living out of this, making some money to subsist but at the same time, destroying their future prospects at a healthy life. Solar panels can’t power cars, but they avoid using fuel for generators for civilians and for hospitals.

Photo Khaled - A close-up on my family's solar panel. It's heavily damaged.

However, solar panels are very vulnerable to attacks, especially rooftop ones. They are physically exposed and fragile. During the current war, over the past two years, they’ve been a primary target of the occupation forces, and most of them have been damaged or destroyed. Because of the blockade, imports of panels, batteries, cables etc. have ceased completely, increasing the price and making solar systems harder to acquire or maintain and repair.

Before our house was bombed and Rafah was razed, my family realised solar panels were one of our most precious assets, so we took one with us.

Unfortunately, it was targeted and damaged beyond repair a few months ago.

So now we’ve got to find someone with a solar panel every day, and we must pay 1 shekel to charge a phone, 2 shekel to charge a phone if we don’t have the cable, and 10 shekel to charge our battery. We normally spend 19 shekel per day (1 for me, 8 for my brothers, 10 for the battery).

However, I was able to find someone willing to sell his solar panel. He’s got several panels and he’s struggling to handle them all. This solar panel would allow my family to stop spending money every day charging our electricals (I’m a computer science student, my brother Omer is 16 years old and he’s attending school online, my brother Bilal is a software engineer…).

Photo Khaled - Khaled Zeyada, 21 years old, from Rafah, Gaza Strip, Palestine, standing next to my family's solar panel.

And it would allow us to have a small daily income by asking others for money for charging their phones, thus relying less on international donations to feed our family of 19 people and to provide them with shelter and warm clothes for winter. But the solar panel costs 1500 dollars, which we don’t have.

I’m humbly coming to you to ask you to participate in our money pot to help power up #Gaza with renewable energy.
If you’re able to donate a few dollars so we can get a #solar panel for Christmas, you would help all of our family as well as helping to make Gaza cleaner and greener. I hope you will be able to assist, or to talk about it with your friends who are friends of #Palestine or of the #environment.