Reuters
The consortium to build the 7.57 billion dirham ($781.5 million) plant also includes UAE’s Masdar and Morocco’s Green Energy of Africa, Masen said in a statement.
A consortium led by French EDF Renewables won a tender launched by the Moroccan agency for sustainable energy (Masen) to build an 800 megawatt solar plant in Morocco’s Atlas Mountains, Masen said on Tuesday.
The consortium to build the 7.57 billion dirham ($781.5 million) plant also includes UAE’s Masdar and Morocco’s Green Energy of Africa, Masen said in a statement.
The project, dubbed Noor Midelt 1, is the first phase of a larger project in the Atlas Mountains region of Morocco as the country plans to exceed 52 percent of renewable energy in the national energy mix by 2030.
Masen has chosen a hybrid system for Noor Midelt 1 that uses concentrated solar plant (CSP) and photovoltaic (PV) technologies.
The project is funded by European Investment Bank, the French Development Agency, the European Commission, the World Bank, the African Development Fund and the Clean Technology Fund, Masen said.
The new plant will be larger than the already operating 580 MW Noor Ouarzazate CSP plant in southeastern Morocco.
By the end of 2018, Morocco installed 1,215 MW of wind energy, 1,770 MW in hydropower and 700 MW in solar, according to official figures. (Reporting by Ahmed Eljechtimi in Rabat Editing by Matthew Lewis)
