Pakistan’s First Solar Project Is One of the World’s Largest

Last week Pakistan’s Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif inaugurated Pakistan’s first solar power park, which will start generating 100 megawatts of energy by the end of the year and a total of 1,000 megawatts by 2016. 

The Quaid-e-Azam Solar Park project has 400,000 solar panels, with a total cost of around $131 million.  When complete the plant will produce about 2.5 times the power coming from the 392 megawatt Ivanpah solar thermal plant in California’s Mojave Desert, making it one of the largest solar parks in the world.

This is big news for a country suffering from chronic energy shortages that leave people without power for large chunks of the day on a regular basis.  And then there’s the nearly half of the households that aren’t even connected to the grid, according to a World Bank study.  When temperatures soar in the summer, electricity demand can fall short by around 4,000 megawatts.

Pakistan’s First Solar Project Is One of the World’s Largest