Iraq is advancing a number of solar energy tasks as a part of a plan to fulfill its electrical energy wants.
Iraq is ready to open its first industrial-scale photo voltaic plant in an enormous desert space in Karbala as the federal government makes an attempt to sort out an electrical energy disaster that has led to widespread blackouts.
Authorities mentioned the plant, the biggest of its type in Iraq, shall be inaugurated on Sunday to ultimately produce as much as 300 megawatts of electrical energy at its peak, in keeping with Iraqi media studies.
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Tens of hundreds of black panels are set out in rows in an enormous desert space, spanning some 4,000 dunams (1,000 acres or 400 hectares) within the al-Hur space of Karbala, situated southwest of capital Baghdad.
Nasser Karim al-Sudani, head of the nationwide group for photo voltaic vitality tasks within the Iraqi prime minister’s workplace, mentioned one other challenge below building in Babil province can have a capability of 225 megawatts, and work can even start quickly on a 1,000-megawatt challenge within the southern province of Basra.
قطاع الطاقة 🇮🇶 | الاول في العراق.. صحراء محافظة كربلاء المقدسة تكتسي بالألواح الشمسية مع تواصل مشروع انشاء محطة كهرباء للطاقة الشمسية ستولد 300 ميغاواط من الطاقة الكهربائية pic.twitter.com/ZTn9MwArat
— مشاريع العراق – Iraq tasks (@IraqProjects) July 29, 2025
Translation: The primary in Iraq. The desert of the holy Karbala Governorate is roofed with photo voltaic panels because the challenge to determine a solar energy plant continues, which is able to generate 300 megawatts {of electrical} vitality.
The tasks are half of a bigger imaginative and prescient to account for a portion of Iraq’s electrical energy wants utilizing large-scale solar energy crops that might assist ease the electrical energy disaster whereas additionally lowering the destructive environmental impression of fuel emissions.
Deputy Minister of Electrical energy Adel Karim mentioned Iraq has photo voltaic tasks with a mixed capability of 12,500 megawatts both being carried out, within the approval course of, or below negotiation. Barring the semi-autonomous northern Kurdistan area of Iraq, the tasks might probably provide as much as 20 % of Iraq’s complete electrical energy demand, in keeping with the official.
However regardless of its large oil and fuel assets, Iraq continues to face – because it has for many years – electricity shortages rooted in battle, corruption and mismanagement.
Nationwide electrical energy consumption peaked at about 55,000 megawatts this summer season as scorching temperatures exceeded 50 levels Celsius (122 levels Fahrenheit) in some areas.
That is whereas deputy minister Karim mentioned the nation is now producing as much as 28,000 megawatts of electrical energy, together with about 8,000 megawatts fuelled by pure fuel imported from neighbouring Iran and fed to energy crops in Iraq.
The important provides from Iran have confronted many challenges through the years as properly, significantly from unilateral sanctions imposed by america in an effort to strain Tehran and squeeze its income streams amid a standoff over Iran’s nuclear programme and army capabilities.
In March, Washington introduced it was ending a sanctions waiver that allowed Iraq to straight buy electrical energy from Iran, which wanted to be renewed each 120 days. The US has, for now, left one other waiver in place that lets Iraq purchase Iranian pure fuel to feed its energy crops.
Iran can also be going through a number of crises, together with massive energy shortages, a problem that has affected its exports to Iraq.
