Moroccan sunshine set to power the nation

Morocco enjoys over 3000 hours of sunshine per year – one of the highest rates in the world. This makes it an ideal location for a new solar project being constructed outside the city of Ouarzazate, on the edge of the Sahara desert.

The Noor complex project will cost around £6bn and its technology will comprise photovoltaic and concentrated solar power. The completed power stations will form the world’s largest solar power plant and, together with other renewable sources, will supply over one third of the country’s electricity - with solar energy supporting the supply to over a million Moroccans by 2018.

The plant itself will cover a 30 square km area and its first phase of three – Noor1 -should be complete and operational within a few weeks. It will use mirror technology - half a million crescent shaped mirrors will track the sun and then focus its energy on a steel pipeline carrying a heat transfer solution that warms to nearly 400 degrees centigrade on its way to a heat engine. Once at the engine the thermic solution will mix with water to generate steam that turns turbines. Molten sands in the engine can retain heat energy for 3 hours, so power will continue to be produced even after sunset.

The target is for Noor 2 and Noor 3 to open in 2017 and to store heat energy for 8 hours giving rise to the possibility of solar energy around the clock.

Morocco aims to generate a third of its renewable energy supply by solar power in the next 5 years. The other portions coming equally from wind and hydro which are also being developed. Together these renewable sources of energy are hoped to be as influential this century for Morocco as oil production was in the last one.