Phase 1 of giant solar project is connected

11 February 2016


On 3 February the first unit of North Africa's largest solar energy installation was connected to the grid in Morocco.
The first phase of the Noor project, a 160 MW solar thermal plant based in the Ouzarate province, cost US$894 million to implement and is the first stage of what will ultimately be a 2GW development, when completed in 2020, and the largest solar complex in the world. A spokesman for the Moroccan Agency for Solar Energy (Masen) stated that the project aims to be generating 2GW by 2020 and will cost about $9 billion in all.
Saudi Arabia's Acwa Power International and Spanish firms Sener SA and Acciona SA developed the first stage of the complex, which is managed by Masen. The project is financed by a number of development banks, including the French Development Agency, the European Investment Bank and Germany's KfW, which each contributed €100 million. The World Bank and the Clean Technology Fund both provided €150 million, and the African Development Bank another €168 million. The European Union and Germany's Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Building and Nuclear Safety have also helped to finance the project with €30 million and €15 million contributions respectively.
With 160 MWe of power and 3.5 hours of molten salt thermal storage the new plant will supply 500 GWh of solar power per year,

Phases II and III of the project are part of the same turnkey contract with the same construction consortium, with the resulting three thermosolar plants providing a total of 510 MWe. All will be equipped with thermal storage systems, particularly appropriate in Morocco where the peak demand is at nightfall, so the integration of these facilities in the electricity system will be one of optimal efficiency. Altogether, they will avert the annual emission of 470 000 tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere.

Sener provided the technology, including the 'SENERtrough' parabolic trough collectors - designed and patented by SENER - and the molten salt storage system. These will be supplied also for Noor II and Noor III phases, the latter to include a central tower with a molten salt receiver collecting energy from an array of heliostat mirrors in the same configuration, but with more recently developed heliostats, as that already successfully installed at the Gemasolar array in Seville, Spain.

Work on Noor II, which is rated at 200 MWe and uses second generation parabolic troughs - the SENERtrough-2 system - has already started.
Sener expects to complete the works and commissioning of Noor II and III by the end of 2017.

- Morocco currently imports over 90 % of its energy and the government has set a target to generate 52 % of its electricity needs from renewable sources by 2030.



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