Wind solar hybrid opportunities in Iraq: comprehensive review, recommendations, and policy roadmap

Iraq's persistent electricity shortages and heavy reliance on fossil fuels make a rapid transition toward its strong solar and wind resources essential. This systematic literature review synthesizes recent techno-economic, spatial, and policy studies to assess practical routes for deploying utility-scale hybrid renewable energy systems in Iraq. Following a structured search of Scopus, Web of Science, and Google Scholar for the period 2000-2026, this review synthesizes existing GIS and GeoAI-based spatiotemporal analyses to highlight three priority regions for wind-solar hybrid development: South Dhi Qar, East Wasit, and West Diyala, with a combined highly suitable area exceeding 3,500 km². Reported techno-economic results show that well-sized hybrid systems in these regions can achieve levelized costs of electricity as low as 0.05 $/kWh and reduce net present cost by around 61% to 83% compared with single-resource systems, such as solar-only or wind- only configurations. For major load centres such as Baghdad, configurations combining PV, wind turbines, and battery storage can reliably supply critical demand while delivering CO₂ savings of roughly 13,000 to 170,000 ton/year, depending on system scale. In addition, integrat: The data that has been used is confidential. ed solar combined cycle plants deployed in high irradiance areas can raise overall efficiency to about 55%. Despite this potential, progress remains constrained by policy uncertainty, an ageing grid with high technical losses, and limited access to stable financing. Overall, the evidence suggests that Iraq's transition will depend on bankable and transparent pro-curement, such as competitive auctions, clear designation of renewable energy zones, and coordinated grid modernisation that proceeds in parallel with new generation deployment.