gathering momentum, following the award, earlier in the year, of a first contract for 160 megawatts to be generated through concentrated-solar technology (CSP).
Also, a winning consortium for the first phase of a 500-megawatt solar power plant to be cited in the southern region of Ouarzazate would be announced within the next month, Mustafa Bakkoury, chairman of the Moroccan Agency for Solar Energy (Masen), has confirmed.
Due for completion in 2015, the 500-megawatt complex is the first in a Plan seeking to produce 2 GW of solar power by 2020 — an equivalent of 38 per cent of the country’s current power generation capacity.
Speaking at a two-day Solar Maghreb conference in Casablanca, Morocco’s largest city, Bakkoury said “works [on Ouarzazate’s first 160-megawatt phase] will start in the third or fourth quarter of 2012.”
He said the work would be completed and Masen would select a winner for the 160-megawatt parabolic trough plant from three contending consortia.
“Masen will then launch tenders to build a 50-megawatt photovoltaic module and CSP towers of at least 50 megawatts, both of which in Ouarzazate,” he said. “We will be moving faster in the launch of Morocco’s Solar Plan projects … Our initial goal to have 2,000 megawatts from solar energy by 2020 is still on.”
The solar power plan is worth $9 billion in investment and will include five power stations, two located in the disputed Western Sahara.
With an electricity consumption rate that keeps surging by 7 per cent annually and a gaping trade deficit spawned by heavy reliance on fossil fuel imports, Morocco is hoping its renewable energies would spark electricity exports to energy-bereft trade partner, the European Union. It also aims to evoke its power market trading licence that allows it sell electricity to Spain, thereby accessing the rest of Europe.
Also, the solar development plan is designed to reduce Morocco’s annual imports of fossil fuels by 2.5 million tonnes of oil equivalent, and forestall emissions of 9 million tonnes of carbon dioxide.
Taoufik Laabi, an electricity strategist said there were expectations that energy demand would double by 2020 and then quadruple by 2030.
The new power target is one the Moroccan government will never give up on. And not only does it hope to achieve it, it hopes to do so at lowered costS, for the sake of its masses.
As Bakoury put it, “developing solar power is an irreversible choice ….” Although the costs are high, he says they would be declining, going forward, adding “I hope we will not rely on public funding for too long.”
