# Economic Energy Allocation of Conventional and Large-Scale PV Power Plants
## 3 Large Scale PV Power in Qatar  
Qatar, represented by Qatar Petroleum (QP) and Qatar Electricity and Water Company (QEWC), established a joint venture company called Siraj Solar Energy to generate electricity from solar power. Siraj Power Energy will be a strategic national investor. The solar power plant's location will be west of Doha near Al-Kharsaah area (shown in Figure 5), with 10 km\({}^{2}\) of land. \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c c c} \hline \hline
**Power Station** & **Available Generation** & **Allocation (MWh)** & **Allocation Percentage (\%)** & **Unit Price (S/MWh)** & **Cost (\$)** \\ \hline A & 6,132,000 & 5,072,820 & 83 & 36 & 182,621,520 \\ B & 3,679,200 & 3,495,240 & 95 & 33 & 115,342,920 \\ C & 1,000,000 & 500,000 & 50 & 50 & 25,000,000 \\ D & 1,250,000 & 1,250,000 & 100 & 18 & 22,500,000 \\ E & 6,132,000 & 2,146,200 & 35 & 36 & 77,263,200 \\ F & 3,679,200 & 3,495,240 & 95 & 33 & 115,342,920 \\ G & 1,000,000 & 1,000,000 & 100 & 15 & 15,000,000 \\ H & 1,250,000 & 412,500 & 33 & 45 & 18,562,500 \\ PV1 & 912,500 & 365,000 & 40 & 40 & 14,600,000 \\ PV2 & 1,095,000 & 985,500 & 90 & 25 & 24,637,500 \\ PV3 & 730,000 & 620,500 & 85 & 28 & 17,374,000 \\ PV4 & 1,095,000 & 657,000 & 60 & 9 & 5,913,000 \\ Total & 27,954,900 & 20,000,000 & & & 6,344,157,560 \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table} 
Table 4: Energy allocated to power plants. Figure 4: Available and allocated energy for the Group B example. Figure 5: Location of Siraj solar energy power plant [23]. The estimated cost of that power plant is $467 million. It will be developed in two phases. The first phase is to generate 400 MW by February 2022, and the second phase is to reach the plant's full capacity (800 MW) by May 2022. By that time, the PV generation will be about 7% of the total available generation, as shown in Figure 6. The installed conventional generation in Qatar is 10.576 GW.  
This project's energy rate is approximately 14.49 $/MWh, which is one of the lowest prices globally for these types of projects [22]. It is a public-private partnership project with a Build Own Operate Transfer (BOOT) contract for 25 years. Then, the ownership will be transferred to KAHRAMAA. In this project, there will be no storage facility. Although solar power plants are located in many countries worldwide, large-scale power plants are relatively new, especially in the GCC region. This is the first plant in Qatar and has a substantial capacity of 700 MW or more. Since Qatar's maximum electricity demand is 8600 MW, the solar power plant will meet more than 8% of that demand. It is essential for Qatar, and especially KAHRAMAA as the national utility, to be prepared to accommodate this large-scale plant. Therefore, its impact on the national grid must be studied carefully, and optimal methods to forecast the output and mitigate any effects of the plant on the network need to be established. Furthermore, Qatar produces almost all of its potable water through desalination. Although reverse osmosis (RO) plants are now being implemented, most of the desalinated water is produced using multi-stage flash or multi-effect distillation techniques, which require turbines to be running to operate. Therefore, the entry of a large-scale solar power plant into the generation dispatch will affect the \"must-run units\" required for water production. This is further compounded by the fact that water demand does not vary seasonally as much as electricity demand (water demand varies 10-15% between summer and winter). For example, the electricity peak demand was 4220 MW on 14 March 2021 and 8210 MW on 6 June 2021. On the other hand, the water consumption was 376.8 million imperial gallons per day (MIGD) on 14 March 2021 and 416.2 MIGD on 6 June 2021. As a result, the electricity peak demand growth is almost 95%, whereas the water consumption growth is only 10% [24; 25]. In Qatar, KAHRAMAA purchases electricity from eight different generation power plants with varying contracts in terms of energy prices.