Minister of State for Energy Affairs H E Saad bin Sherida Al Kaabi (centre) addressing a press conference about inauguration of Al Kharsaah Solar PV Power Plant yesterday. President of Qatar General Electricity and Water Corporation (Kahramaa) Eng Issa bin Hilal Al Kuwari (left) and Executive Vice-President of Surface Development and Sustainability at QatarEnergy Ahmad Saeed Al Amoodi are also seen.
The production of solar power in Qatar is expected to reach about 1,700 megawatts by 2024, Minister of State for Energy Affairs H E Saad bin Sherida Al Kaabi said yesterday.
Al Kaabi who is also President and CEO of QatarEnergy was speaking at a press conference on the occasion of the inauguration of Al Kharsaah Solar PV Power Plant (KSPP) at Al Kharsaah.
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).
“Our plan in QatarEnergy is to reach to 5,000 megawatts (5 gigawatt) solar power production by 2035. Now H H the Amir inaugurated Al Kharsaah Power Plant with the capacity of 800 megawatts,” said the Minister.
He said the work has started for building two solar power projects with the capacity of 875 megawatts — about 400 megawatts from each project — at Ras Laffan City and Mesaieed City for QatarEnergy.
With these projects, he said that the production of solar power in the country will reach about 1,700 megawatts by 2024.
“To host carbon neutral FIFA World Cup, Qatar had promised to add 100 megawatts solar power to its national grid, so now with inauguration of Al Kharsaah Power Plant with the capacity of 800 megawatts solar power has increased eight times from those pledged to provide.”
He said the idea of producing solar power began in 2016 as Qatar has sunny days round the year. “We adopted the project to make a balance in producing electricity by using fossil fuels and solar power.
The Minister said that another reason to go for solar power is following the strategy of QatarEnergy and the State to reduce carbon emissions.
To a question from The Peninsula, the Ministers said that the Al Kharsaah Solar PV Power Plant (KSPP) was developed at a cost of about QR1.7bn. He said the project has reached its full capacity of 800 megawatts.
KSPP was constructed on a 10 square kilometres. 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 to maximise daily production. It utilises robotic arms and treated water to clean the solar panels at night in order to enhance the plant’s production efficiency.
KSPP started supplying power to Qatar’s national grid last June, initially with 400 MW. Full capacity was reached by the end of the second phase. The KSPP can provide the national grid with about 10% of peak electricity demand.
The project is a joint venture of QatarEnergy Renewable Solutions (60%), Marubeni (20.4%) and TotalEnergies (19.6%). 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.
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of TotalEnergies, Patrick Pouyanné, in a statement, said: “After our recent entry in the giant LNG projects NFE and NFS alongside QatarEnergy, we are proud to announce today the start-up of the Al Kharsaah solar plant.”
He said this giant project, which has contributed to the sustainability roadmap of Qatar, demonstrates once again TotalEnergies’ ability to support producing countries in their energy transition by combining natural gas production and solar energy to meet the growing demand for electricity.
“This is another milestone in our long-standing and trustful relationship with QatarEnergy, also bringing us closer to our goal of 35 GW of production capacity by 2025,” said Pouyanné.
