Rooftop solar panels become mandatory on new houses

From December 11, 2025, the regulation comes into effect making the installation of rooftop solar panels on new houses mandatory to receive a building permit for new houses and some towers.

Who will be required to install rooftop solar panels?

Under regulations approved by Israel’s Planning Administration, every house built in Israel from now on will be required to install rooftop solar panels to produce electricity. About 10,000 houses are built in Israel each year. In addition, the law sets out a similar obligation for non-residential buildings with a roof area of more than 250 square meters. These include large business towers, as well as factories, warehouses, and other large buildings. The following will be exempt from the obligation: sheds without walls, mikvahs, buildings located on the first line to the sea, preserved buildings, and low roofs. According to the Ministry of Energy and Infrastructure, most of the electricity produced because of this obligation will come from the larger roofs.

How much electricity will the solar rooftop panels be required to produce?

The solar rooftop panels on a house will need to have a production capacity of at least five kW, which is considered a relatively small solar roof. In a non-residential building, the installation will need to have a production capacity in kilowatts based on the roof area (in square meters) divided by 20, up to 15 kilowatts.

For example, a building with a roof area of 250 square meters will need to install a 12.5 kW system, and any building with a roof area of 300 square meters or more will reach the maximum size required by law.

How much does such an installation cost?

According to a review published in “Globes” by GreenDays, a company that compares prices between solar panel installers, the cost of installation can range from NIS 45,000 to NIS 90,000, depending on the area. Roofs with unusual characteristics or shapes can affect the price even more.

Those who also want to install storage batteries (which will allow them to increase the ability to sell to the grid and even serve the house for a few hours in the event of a power outage) will have to pay more, but there is no regulatory obligation for this.

Is selling solar generated electricity economically viable?

Very much so. The state offers a generous tariff of NIS. 0.48 per kWh for solar production, which increases to NIS 0.56 per kWh in big cities (over 50,000 residents or those expected to reach that size soon). A large commercial solar energy field receives a tariff of only NIS 0.07 per kilowatt-hour. This means that the power grid is willing to pay an exceptionally high price for the tiny electricity production inside cities. The Ministry of Energy and Infrastructure estimates that, taking into account installation costs, selling solar electricity to the grid carries a return of 15% per year. There are also pricing options that start low and gradually rise according to the increase in the Consumer Price Index or alternatively pay more at first to recoup the investment, and then the return decreases.

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The price for electricity from large installations on larger rooftops is lower and decreases later.

Why is the country doing this?

Israel is one of the first to impose such an obligation. The State of California imposed such an obligation in 2020, and a few years later France and Italy joined it, as well as several states in Germany. The EU will gradually introduce such an obligation between 2026 and 2032.

The combination of generous payment for production and an obligation to install panels on new homes is part of a major push by the state by the Ministry of Energy and Infrastructure to add 100,000-150,000 solar panel roofs. Israel has pledged to reach 30% production from renewable energies by 2030, but it is currently only at half of that target. The bulk of the addition will come from large commercial solar fields, but there are also advantages to small ones: They allow production close to consumption centers in cities, which does not require the construction of expensive transmission infrastructure, and they do not require new land. In addition, the decentralization of electricity production in Israel provides resilience in cases of malfunction or security damage to electricity production.

The Ministry of Energy and infrastructure hopes to add hundreds of megawatts of electricity capacity each year in this way, and up to 3,500 megawatts by 2040 (for comparison: a conventional power plant has a capacity of 700-800 megawatts). In doing so, the Ministry of Energy also wants to save about 8,750 acres of land.

The Ministry of Energy and Infrastructure estimates that of the additional 3,500 megawatts produced in 2040, 75% will come from large rooftops of non-residential buildings, which are eligible for a lower feed-in tariff and are expected to decline in the coming years, although it is not yet clear by how much. In addition, a large portion of these buildings will consume the energy produced on the rooftop and will not feed the energy into the grid at all and therefore will not receive a high tariff from the electricity grid.