The Moroccan Agency for Sustainable Energy (MASEN) announced in May 2019 that the consortium of Masdar, EDF Renewables, and Green of Africa was awarded the tender for the design, financing, construction, operation and maintenance of the Noor Midelt Phase 1 multi-technologies solar power plant.

The project, which will have a total installed capacity of 800MW, is the world’s first advanced hybridisation of concentrated solar power (CSP) and photovoltaic (PV) technologies.

On completion, it will provide dispatchable solar energy during the day and until five hours after sunset for a record-low tariff at peak hours of 0.68 Moroccan dirhams per kilowatt-hour.

Noor Midelt Phase 1 is the third project that EDF Renewables and Masdar will be working on together. EDF Renewables is a partner in Shua’a Energy 2, the joint venture led by Dubai Electricity Water Authority (DEWA) developing the 800-megawatt (MW) third phase of the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Solar Park in Dubai, the first 200MW stage of which was inaugurated in April 2018.

The two companies are also partners in the recently announced Dumat Al Jandal wind farm, which at 400MW will be Saudi Arabia’s first and the MENA region's largest wind energy project.

Construction of the Noor Midelt Phase 1 plant, located 20km north of the town of Midelt in central Morocco, will start towards the end of 2019, while delivery of the first electricity to the grid is planned from 2022.

Project Info

Technologies Used
CSP and PV
Location
Noor Midelt
Project Completion Year
Announced 2019
Status
Due for construction