File photo of Al Kharsaah Solar PV Power Plant
Doha, Qatar: To enhance the renewable energy transition for sustainability, solar power is expected to reach 30 percent of the total electricity production of Qatar by 2030, said a top official.
“Qatar still depends largely on gas-fired thermal plants for producing electricity, however, the production of renewable energy began with Al Kharsaah Solar PV Power Plant (KSPP),” said Senior Engineer of the National Control Center (NCC) at Qatar General Electricity and Water Corporation (Kahramaa) Mohammad Saleh Al Ashqar.
Speaking to Qatar TV recently he said that KSPP which opened ahead of FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 currently meets about 7 percent of the total demand.
“Of course, there are future projects with partners like QatarEnergy to produce more solar energy. We are studying to increase the percentage to achieve Qatar National Vision 2030 which is equivalent to 30 percent of the total production of electricity in the country,” said Al Ashqar.
To a question about plans of Kahramaa to deal with any sudden failure, he said: “There are reserves - whether instantaneous or that we can press in service in a short period.”
He said that Qatar's electricity network is also connected with GCC Grid which is the largest support from outside the country to ensure power stability in the country.
“GCC Grid is the first source in terms of network stability until the system recovers, but we also have a rotating reserve in our plan that we use in time of need or also as a reserve. We can bring them in service quickly within half an hour without the consumer feeling interruption and these reserves are available throughout the year,” said Al Ashqar.
Speaking about the readiness of Kahramaa for summer when the power demand surges, he said: “We prepares for the summer period by setting plans for maintenance programmes during winter because it is a period of low loads.”
He said that all maintenance programmes are completed during this period, whether in generating stations or in the transmission and distribution networks.
“If we take a simple comparison between the winter period and the summer period, there will be an increase of more than 50% in consumption in summer compared to winter,” said Al Ashqar.
He said that this is natural due to the rise in temperature and increase in humidity during the day, resulting in the use of air conditioners which consume about 70% of electricity in a household.
Al Ashqar urged citizens and residents to follow the National Programme for Conservation and Energy Efficiency (Tarsheed) drive to rationalise the consumption of electricity and water for sustainability and cutting carbon footprint.
KSPP is the first in Qatar and one of the largest in terms of size and capacity in the region, with a total capacity of 800 megawatts (MW).
KSPP was constructed on a 10 square kilometre land area. It includes more than 1,800,000 solar panels that utilise sun-tracking technology to follow the movement of the sun to ensure the most efficient use of land and maximize daily production.
Building this plant comes as part of implementing QatarEnergy’s updated Sustainability Strategy, which reemphasises its commitment, as a major energy producer, to the responsible production of clean and affordable energy to facilitate the energy transition.
In addition to increasing solar capacity to over 5 GW, the strategy targets reducing Greenhouse Gas emissions and deploying carbon capture and storage technology to capture over 11 million tonnes per annum of CO2 in Qatar by 2035.
It also aims to further reduce the carbon intensity of LNG facilities bolstering Qatar’s commitment to responsibly supply cleaner LNG at scale in support of the energy transition.
