Israel approves $33 million storage facility for "kosher electricity" during Sabbath.
Israel's cabinet has approved a pilot program called "kosher electricity" that would provide religious Israelis with electricity approved for use during the weekly Sabbath. The program would direct the national power utility to build massive battery banks in and around ultra-Orthodox communities that would store energy created during non-Sabbath hours and dispense it during Shabbat hours, providing a workaround to rabbinical rules against plugging into the national grid from sundown on Fridays to sundown on Saturdays. Critics have condemned the battery farms as a giveaway to the ultra-Orthodox and another perk that will benefit this growing religious minority at the expense of other ratepayers.
