- Iraq plans to build two solar parks with a combined capacity of 630MW
- A second project for a 500MW solar farm has been awarded to Chinese companies.
To support the province’s energy supply, the Al-Muthanna Governorate in southern Iraq plans to build two solar parks with a combined capacity of 630 MW. Assistant governor Hamid Al-Hassani told the official Iraqi newspaper Al-Sabaah that one of the solar farms will have a total of 130MW and be built in the Al-Khidhir district. The local government has provided the land for the plant, and the project has been assigned to the companies that will carry it out.
According to Al-Hassani, a second project for a 500MW solar farm has been awarded to Chinese companies already working on it. The facility will be built on an 8,000-dunam (2,000-hectare) plot near the Samawa combined-cycle power plant. The two projects are the latest in a series of initiatives announced recently by Iraq, which aims to have 12GW of renewable energy generation capacity by the end of this decade. According to the US-based Global Energy Monitor, Iraq has 5.75 GW of potential solar projects.