“Kosher” electricity is coming to Israel. The Minister of Energy and Infrastructure, MK Israel Katz, will submit a decision-making proposal to the government intended to accelerate the establishment of electricity generation and energy storage facilities in cities and their connection to the public distribution network in dense urban areas. This is intended to allow for the use on Shabbat – the Sabbath – of electricity generated on a weekday so that there will no longer be a need to produce new electricity on Shabbat.

Jewish law prohibits the use of electricity on Shabbat, except through the use of timers so that there is no physical act of turning devices on and off on the Sabbath itself. But this still requires the power company to produce new electricity on the Sabbath day itself, which violates Jewish law.

So, Israel’s orthodox parties have worked to promote such a system that would eliminate the need for generating new electricity on the Sabbath day.

According to the decision, the Electricity Authority will create the appropriate regulation that will allow “kosher electricity” in areas where there is a population that requests it.

In order to ensure the maintenance of competition in the economy, the Electric Company will sell to the private market the facility it will build as part of the pilot within a few years. In general, the pilot facility will be a small proportion of the expected storage capacity in Israel, as storage facilities with a capacity of hundreds of megawatts are expected to be built in the coming years.

The horizontal regulation for kosher electricity and the pilot of the electric company will be formulated so that there will be no increase in the price of electricity as a result of these moves.