The Palestine CleanTech Innovation Competition is conceived as an opportunity to fill the energy gaps within the Palestinian industrial sector. But which challenges have prompted the inventiveness of MOUSTADAMA's entrepreneurs? Specific subsectors and processes have been at the heart of the projects developed by the candidates of the Palestine CleanTech Innovation Competition.
Several startups have investigated PV panels energy efficiency, exploring ways to increase their productivity by 20-40% through cleaning and cooling. Others have looked at the combination of existing technologies with solar PV systems to reduce electricity consumption: it is the case of solar fruits and vegetables dryers, who can produce higher quality products with competitive prices and are addressed to fit the needs of small agro-businesses.
Other proposals relate to waste-to-energy and waste-to-product technologies, together with battery-recovery related solutions, energy auditing services, and biologically clean pesticides for agricultural use, which potentially reduced the amounts of irrigation water and electricity used by industrial production.
Lastly, several projects tackle water availability and recur to various technologies – including solar, ocean wave energy conversion, and biogas - to desalinate water through energy-efficient processes and make it available for drinking, agricultural irrigation, and sanitation.
Image above: The co-founder of Solar Food, Ms. Hanadi Sufyan AbuHarbid, with the company’s prototype, a device that integrates a hybrid solar heat pump dryer technology which reduces the costs of dried food production and enhances the efficiency of the food drying processes and the quality of the final products - credits: MOUSTADAMA, UNIDO Palestine.
