Solar Power Plant goes online in Morocco

The Kingdom of Morocco is preparing a major solar power project on five sites — Laayoune (Sahara), Boujdour (Western Sahara), Tarfaya (south of Agadir), Ain Beni Mathar (center) and Ouarzazate — with state of the art solar facilities composed of photovoltaic and solar thermal energy mechanisms. The sites will cover 10000 hectares and should produce up to 2 000 megawatts of electricity, "an annual saving of one million tons of oil," according to Minister of Energy, Amina Benkhadra. Renewable forms of energy are attractive as Morocco depends virtually entirely on imported energy.

This video show Ain Beni Mathar, the first plant. Ain Beni Mathar enjoys abundant sunshine and has enough
water to cool the power station and clean the solar mirrors. It is close to both the Maghreb-Europe Gas Pipeline and the high voltage grid that will help move the power it generates.



This plant combines solar power and thermal power. It enables ONE to diversify its energy sources, increase its production capacity from 200 to 250 MW by 2012 and to supply the interconnected system with nearly 1590 GWh per year, of which 55 GWh will come from solar, and save on fuel costs.