An Overview of Wind Energy Potentials in Palestine

Abstract

This study represents an overview on the possibility of using wind energy to fulfill the increasing demand on energy and the lack of supplied energy in the Palestinian territories, by analyzing and discussing former studies in this field. All previous studies mainly depended on historical data, and data from automated meteorological stations for some of the main cities in Palestine. However, the previous researches depended on data collected between 1991 – 2013, and used Weibull distribution function to analysing it. Moreover, all these studies agree about the possibility of exploiting wind energy, especially in high areas in Hebron in West Bank and Gaza city in Gaza Strip, to solve both the crisis of shortage electricity and the increase demand on energy. The highest wind energy is in Hebron, and the average month wind speed is between 3 m/s – 7.5 m/s, and the lowest wind energy is in Jericho, and the wind speed there is less than 2.5 m/s in most time. Some studies pointed that wind energy potential can be more efficient by using the hybrid PV / Wind system. At the same time, it can minimize the cost of generated energy from using each system independently. However, there are many obstacles of using wind energy to generate electricity in Palestine.