HH Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, Amir of the State of Qatar, inaugurated on Tuesday Al-Kharsaah Solar PV Power Plant (KSPP), the first in Qatar and one of the largest in the region, with a total capacity of 800 megawatts (MW), QatarEnergy said.
The solar power plant was constructed on a 10 square kilometer land area. It includes more than 1,800,000 solar panels that utilize sun tracking technology to follow the movement of the sun to ensure the most efficient use of land and to maximize daily production. It utilizes robotic arms and treated water to clean the solar panels at night in order to enhance the plant’s production efficiency.
Speaking at the inauguration ceremony, HE Saad Sherida Al-Kaabi, Qatar’s energy minister, highlighted some of Qatar’s efforts towards achieving its sustainability targets, stressing that “the Al-Kharsaah plant is one of the country’s strategic initiatives to build projects that contribute to reducing gas and thermal emissions, thus achieving about a million-ton reduction in annual carbon dioxide emissions.”
Al-Kaabi highlighted some of the environmental efforts and sustainability requirements that were taken into account in building this landmark plant, saying: “The site of Al-Kharsaah was chosen following extensive scientific studies to determine the sites with the best possible operational efficiency and maximum economic value, placing great consideration to the geological, environmental, and social impacts of establishing this station.”
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The Al-Kharsaah Solar PV Power Plant is owned by a joint venture between affiliates 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 reemphasizes 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 tons 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.
