Solar energy implementation at the household level: Gaza Strip case study

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, Szakaly 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.