the israeli water authority permits water pumping and purification operators the freedom to minimise their energy demands during these peak daytime hours to minimise costs and maximise profits operators pump larger proportions of the daily water quotas during the night hours and store these in numerous reservoirs throughout the country they thereby reduce energy costs while helping homogenise energy demands across the daynight cycle in another instance the israeli water authority issues tenders for the construction of largescale desalination plants that are as energyefficient as possible