LONGi has secured the contract to provide the PV modules and tracking system for the Al Kharsaah PV project in Qatar. The company made the announcement on February 23, and the story was first reported by other news outlets including GCC Business News.
Located 80km west of Doha and spanning an area of 10 sq. km, the Al Kharsaah project is Qatar’s first PV power plant and set to have a generation capacity of 800MW. It will deploy 2 million bifacial modules mounted on trackers and 3,240 string inverters. French energy giant TotalEnergies and Japanese industrial conglomerate Marubeni are jointly developing the project. They formed the consortium that won the tender for the project in January 2020. TotalEnergies estimates that the PV power plant will be able to meet the electricity demand from 55,000 households and offset CO2 emissions by 26 million MT over its operational lifespan.
The ownership of the project will be divided between the consortium of TotalEnergies and Marubeni (40%) and Siraji Energy (60%), which is a joint venture of Qatar Petroleum and Qatar Electricity & Water Company. The total investment for project is estimated to reach around US$467 million. The entire project is expected to be connected to the grid by the second half of this year as scheduled. The Qatari government wants to have the PV power plant serve as a showpiece when the 2022 FIFA World Cup takes place in the country this November.
The development of the Al Kharsaah PV project is a step forward in achieving the clear energy objectives laid out in Qatar’s National Vision 2030. Qatar has been relying on its reserves of natural gas for much of its electricity generation while exporting its oil reserves. While the country also receives an abundant amount of sunlight through the year, solar PV was initially not considered as an attractive option for electricity generation. Nevertheless, the trends of depleting hydrocarbon resources and declining costs of PV technologies have now created opportunities for the country to undertake energy transition.
LONGi stated that the Al Kharsaah project is the largest of its kind for the deployment of bifacial modules with a tracking system. Featuring M6 half-cut cells and 9BB, the Hi-MO 4 bifacial module offers high power output and lower hot spot temperature.