The foundation stone for Qatar’s largest power and desalination plant will be laid next month, a senior Qatar Electricity & Water Co. (QEWC) official has said.

The US$3.15 billion (QR11.47 billion) facility, which was first announced in May, will be located in Umm al Houl, in the southern part of the country.

The plant’s construction comes at a time when Qatar has seen unprecedented growth in demand for both water and energy, whose consumption increased by more than three-quarters between 2007 and 2013, according to government statistics.

When completed in 2018, the Umm al Houl facility will produce enough power to supply some 2.5 million homes.

However, much of that energy will likely be used to power the desalination plant that is being built on the same site.

That facility will process seawater and produce 135.6 million imperial gallons of potable water per day – enough to fill nearly 247 Olympic-size swimming pools.

The plant is being designed, constructed and operated by a joint venture consisting of Kahramaa, Qatar Petroleum, Qatar Foundation, Mitsubishi Corp. and Tokyo Electric Power Co.

The power and water produced at the facility will then be purchased by local utility Kahramaa for 25 years.

Other projects

In a regulatory filing to Qatar Exchange (QE) yesterday, QEWC General Manager Fahad Hamad Al Mohannadi said the company is also working on several other major projects to boost Qatar’s energy and water supply.

Those include five mega-reservoirs expected to be completed by mid-2018 and a major solar power plant slated to open next year.

That facility in Duhail will be one of several sites dotted throughout Qatar that will be used to help meet the nation’s target of producing 200MW of solar energy in the coming six years – enough to power 66,000 homes.

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