The 1st large scale solar power plant in Qatar, 800 MW Al Kharsaah PV Project has been commissioned by the consortium of France's TotalEnergies, Qatar's QatarEnergy and Japan's Marubeni, and is designed to provide 10% of the country's peak consumption.
The project in Al Kharsaah is equipped with 2 million high efficiency Hi-MO 4 bifacial solar panels from China's LONGi Solar along with single-axis trackers. LONGi said this plant is the world's largest PV project to combine these 2 elements.
Inaugurated by the Emir of Qatar Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, the project is operated by Siraj 1 that's jointly owned by the consortium.
The facility is designed to generate 1.8 billion kWh annually, all of which is contracted to be supplied to national electricity network operator Kahramaa. It is one of the largest solar PV facilities in the Middle East.
The consortium won the project in January 2022 for the winning bid of QAR 0.0571 per kWh back then hailed at the lowest competitive unit price for solar power globally (see Record Low Winning Bid In 800 MW Qatar PV Tender).
QatarEnergy is also working on realizing 2 large scale solar PV plants with 875 MW capacity in Mesaieed Industrial City (MIC) and Ras Laffan Industrial City (RLIC) as the 2nd utility scale solar project in Qatar. This capacity will be divided as 417 MW in MIC and 458 MW in RLIC. It is scheduled to enter commercial operations by 2024-end.
The article has been updated to add LONGi as the module supplier for the 800 MW PV project.
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