Qatar General Electricity and Water Corporation (Kahramaa) will issue a public tender before year end for the construction of its first large scale solar powerplant.
Essa bin Hilal Al Kuwari, the President of Kahramaa, announced during a press conference held at the Kahramaa main building, that the prequalification of 16 international Solar Power Developers has been completed for the Photovoltaic (PV) power plant.
The solar plant comes within Kahramaa plans to diversify power generation resources and increase renewable energy percentage in Qatar’s energy mix.
“Since our country has an abundance of solar energy and from monitoring the recent developments in solar panel manufacturing along with reduction in costs, and from studying the amount of natural gas that can potentially be saved, Kahramaa has decided to go forward with a utility-scale solar power plant,” Kahramaa President said.
Essa Bin Hilal Al- Kuwari President Qatar General Electricity and Water Corporation (Kahramaa) during the press conference at Kahramaa Head office today. Pic: Abdul Basit / The Peninsula
Al-Kuwari added that the project comes in implementation of the higher directives of H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani, the Amir of Qatar to reduce dependence on oil and gas to achieve economic diversity and in line with the economic and environmental development pillars of Qatar National Vision 2030.
“As a first stage, 350 MW will be connected to the grid by 2020 in achievement of the strategic objective set in QNDS 2018–2022,” he clarified.
Land measuring 10kmsq located west of Doha near Al-Kharsaah area has been allocated for the construction of the solar power plant, with a total capacity of at least 700MW. The environmental aspects were studied in coordination with the Ministry of Municipality and Environment.
The project will be based on Public-Private Partnership (PPP) concept for the encouragement of investment in large scale projects. The project is structured as Build Own Operate Transfer (BOOT) for 25 years, where the ownership will be transferred to Kahramaa after the end of the term. Siraj Energy participates in the project as a Strategic National Investor.
Kahramaa attracted international companies and consortiums with wide experience in development of solar plants and 16 international developers have been prequalified.
Under this project it is expected to achieve competitive power prices, save natural gas used in traditional power generation, along with reducing carbon emissions and preserving the environment. It is one of the objectives of the national programme for conservation and energy efficiency (Tarsheed) to reduce 7% of harmful carbon emissions in Qatar. Since it was launched by Kahramaa in 2012, Tarsheed managed to reduce 10.6 tonnes of emissions.
Source: thepeninsulaqatar.com
Images Sources: Kahramaa Facebook page
