Developers will have until September 16 to prequalify for the Noor Midelt II tender, the Moroccan Agency for Sustainable Energy (Masen) said. The project forms part of Morocco’s goal to supply 52% of power generation from renewable sources by 2030, equivalent to 6 GW of new capacity.
Five international Concentrated Solar Power consortia pre-qualified for the Noor Midelt I tender, including groups led by ACWA Power, France’s EDF, Engie, Germany’s Innogy and Japan’s JGC.
EDF’s winning consortium, which includes the UAE’s Masdar and Morocco’s Green of Africa, will install 200 MW of parabolic trough Concentrated Solar Power capacity, 600 MW of PV capacity and five hours of energy storage capacity. Spain’s TSK group will act as technology provider and engineering procurement contractor (EPC).
Noor Midelt I features a combination of thermal energy storage and battery storage technologies for greater efficiency, Oliver Baudson, Managing Director at TSK Flagsol, the specialist CSP subsidiary of TSK, told New Energy Update in June.
TSK Flagsol will supply its parabolic trough collector technology and design optimization favored 800 MW of total installed capacity, Baudson said.
Noor Midelt I will be located 20 km north of the town of Midelt, on a site measuring direct normal irradiance (DNI) of around 2,360 kWh per square-meter per year. Construction will begin in Q4 2019 and the plant is due online by 2022, EDF said.
Morocco has already completed three CSP plants at its Noor Ouarzazate solar park for a combined capacity of 510 MW. All three plants were developed by a group led by ACWA Power.
In December 2018, ACWA Power and partners brought online the 150 MW Noor III central tower plant, which includes 7.5 hours of storage capacity.
Morocco’s first CSP tower plant, Noor III has exceeded performance targets on output and storage integration in the first few months of operation.
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