RAMALLAH, Jan. 20 (Xinhua) -- Palestine is trying to diversify its sources of electric power to guarantee energy security for the Palestinian consumers, a Palestinian energy official told Xinhua in a recent interview.

In a step to achieve the goal, Palestine signed an agreement with Jordan to increase the quantity of electric supply by 50 megawatts before the end of the year.

The agreement, signed in Amman on Thursday, is aimed at increasing Palestine's regional connection for electricity in order to lessen its dependency on Israel as the main source, especially in light of the recent power outages in the occupied territories.

In the first phase, Jordan will export 80 megawatts to Palestine, to be followed by another 80 megawatts in the second phase, once infrastructure projects are completed, said the Chairman of the Palestinian Energy and Natural Resources Authority Zafer Milhem in a special interview with Xinhua.

"The agreement we signed a few days ago, on Jan. 16, was the first phase of the increase in power export from Jordan to Palestine, to 80 megawatts, instead of 30. This requires infrastructure projects that we have already begun with on the Palestinian side, and we are currently working on getting the infrastructure ready on the Jordanian side, by building a transmission station on the Palestinian-Jordanian borders," said Milhem.

Milhem explained that 80 percent of the needed infrastructure is completed, where the current network has been ungraded to increase its capacity, while the borderline transmission station would be completed after seven months.

According to Milhem, Palestinians pay a total amount of about 72 million U.S. dollars to the Israeli electricity company monthly, to provide approximately 1,100 megawatts of electricity to the West Bank and some 250 megawatts to the Gaza Strip.

"We have relied on diversifying sources of power as a strategy to realize energy security for the Palestinian consumers," Milhem said.

Milhem said that the government is advancing its plans to reduce its dependency on Israel in the energy sector, but it cannot completely disengage from the existing networks at this point.

"Decreasing the dependency on Israel is a policy and a strategy that would lead to provide enough electric power to consumers without cuts," Milhem added.

However, for the Palestinian energy strategy to be fulfilled, it would require an integral electricity network grid, which is difficult to achieve in the West Bank, due to the Israeli restrictions in areas under its control and the expanding settlements.

"As a result of the occupation, there is no interconnection between network grids," said Milhem, noting that "each city or village's network is disconnected from the other. This decreases the capacity of solar energy supply."

"At the moment, the Palestinian Electricity Transmission Company is working on unifying and connecting the networks between Palestinian cities," Milhem said. Enditem

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