ANSAmed
It’s already known as “the place of the wind” but now that Africa’s largest wind plant has began to run, Tarfaya, Antoine de Sant-Exupery’s village is really beginning to fly. Tarfaya, a small fishing town in the south-west of Morocco facing the Canary Islands, is associated to the French aviator-writer who authored the ‘Little Prince’.
In 1927 Saint-Exupery was the manager of the airport linking France and Senegal and it is here that he drew his inspiration to write his most iconic story. A propeller ‘s biplane of the times is the rickety homage Marocco tributed to the inventor of a dream. Nowadays, all around lie 131 windmill blades, 81 metres high, scattered on 8,900 hectares and taking in the power of the desert’s winds.
After two years of labour and the mobilization of over 700 workers the park can guarantee a capacity of 301 megawatts which would be enough to light up a city of a million and a half people like Marrakesh. The contruction of the plant was undertaken by Taraya Energy Project (Tarac), a Moroccan company in which Nareva Holding, linked to the royal family, and French group GDF Suez, are equal shareholders. Five billion dirhams, the equivalent of 450 million euros were invested in the project and all funding came from the companies responsible for the realisation of the wind farm.
The capacity of the plant represents 15% of the 2 gigawatts that Marocco has fixed as a target for the development of renewable energies, including the solar one, within 2020. The Tarfaya investment is already freeing Morocco from the emission of 900 thousand tonnes of CO2. (ANSAmed).
