Taroudant - The American TV channel CNN published a detailed article about Morocco’s solar energy, saying that the country is well positioned as world "solar superpower," thanks to the Noor Project in Ouarzazate whose first phase, titled Noor 1, will be operational in the next few weeks.
Taroudant – The American TV channel CNN published a detailed article about Morocco’s solar energy, saying that the country is well positioned as world “solar superpower,” thanks to the Noor Project in Ouarzazate whose first phase, titled Noor 1, will be operational in the next few weeks.
The Channel, citing the World Bank, said that Ouarzazate project, the world’s biggest concentrated solar power plant, will supply electricity to 1.1 million Moroccans by 2018.
“The country is well positioned to benefit from its head-start at a time when other regional powers are beginning to think more seriously about their own renewable energy programs,” Inger Andersen, World Bank Regional Vice President for the Middle East and North Africa, was quoted by CNN as saying.
The Noor Project will use a highly advanced technology called Concentrating Solar Power (CSP), which “allows to store energy for nights and cloudy days.”
According to the same source, this technology “uses mirrors to focus the sun’s light and heat up a liquid, which is mixed with water and reaches a temperature close to 400 degrees Celsius. This produces steam, which in turn drives a turbine to generate electrical power.”
“There is a very strategic sense in Morocco of diversifying energy sources,” says energy specialist, Roger Coma-Cunill in a World Bank blog, “and a clear sense, with all these targets to reach by 2020, of adding to a green growth plan and being a model for Africa. Morocco is trying to be a gateway to Africa – that’s part of this endeavor,” he adds.
CNN said that Morocco which is famous for its Atlas Mountains, old meandering medinas and deserts will soon “make its name as a solar superpower.”
