French energy company TotalEnergies has inaugurated its Al Kharsaah solar facility in Doha, Qatar, and connected it to the national grid.

Located 80km west of Doha, the 800MW solar facility is the first large-scale solar photovoltaic plant in the region.

TotalEnergies developed the facility in partnership with QatarEnergy and Marubeni.

Covering 1,000ha, the solar facility is equipped with two million bifacial modules mounted on single-axis trackers.

It has the capacity to meet 10% of Qatar’s peak power consumption and offset 26 million tonnes of carbon emissions during its lifetime.

TotalEnergies chairman and CEO Patrick Pouyanné said: “After our recent entry in the giant liquid natural gas (LNG) projects NFE and NFS alongside QatarEnergy, we are proud to announce today the start-up of the Al Kharsaah solar plant.

“This giant project, which contributed to the sustainability roadmap of Qatar, demonstrates once again TotalEnergies‘ ability to support producing countries in their energy transition by combining natural gas production and solar energy to meet the growing demand for electricity.

“This is another milestone in our long-standing and trustful relationship with QatarEnergy, also bringing us closer to our goal of 35GW of production capacity by 2025.”

Al Kharsaah is developed and operated by Siraj 1, a company owned jointly by TotalEnergies, Marubeni and QatarEnergy Renewable Solutions.

A consortium of TotalEnergies and Marubeni owns a 40% stake in Siraj 1 while QatarEnergy holds the remaining 60% stake.

The solar project includes a 25-year power purchase agreement (PPA) between Siraj 1 and the power grid operator Kahramaa.

In August this year, TotalEnergies and Eneos obtained clearance to form a joint venture (JV) to develop 2GW worth of business-to-business solar projects in Asia over the next five years.

The JV initially signed long-term power purchase agreements for 34MWp of capacity located across nine countries.