One of the most fundamental markers of a developed society is that of access to 24-hour electricity. Israel is by all means a fully-functioning industrialized developed society, but yet there exists 45 villages with more than 76,000 citizens of Israel who have no access to the national electrical grid. In the Negev, a desert home to intense temperatures in both summer and winter, the lack of electricity is exremely harmful, and every year people die due to lack of heating during the bitter cold of winter nights, and intense summer heat.
Electricity comes to the people of the unrecognized village in two forms: generators, and for those who can afford it, solar power. Families will purchase a generator together, splitting it 4 or 5 ways to offset the very substantial cost. If a family can afford it, a solar hook up will supplement the electricity needs of the family, however a single solar power system is not enough to provide 24-hour power to a household. The generators are inefficient and expensive, but currently the only option left to a population denied access to the electricity most Israelis consider basic.
The national electric grid runs through the villages in the form of high tension wires, in fact there is even a major electric plant smack in the center of one of the largest villages, but the residents do not have access to any of it.
The electric plant in Wadi al-Naam.
