ACWA Power Ouarzazate has just awarded an EPC (Engineering, Procurement, and Construction) contract to the Spanish consortium composed of Acciona, Sener, and TSK to build the 160 MW Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) Independent Power Plant (IPP) with parabolic troughs in Ouarzazate.

The EPC contractor will thus be in charge of the project's realisation, from the basic design to the final completion of the work. In fact, this consortium has begun engineering and procurement, in accordance with a limited service order.

The development of the project will make significant use of companies located in Morocco. Let us recall in this sense that ACWA Power Ouarzazate committed, during its adjudication, to hiring directly and indirectly more than 1,000 Moroccan employees. And that during the operational launch phase, a little over 60% of the staff should be of Moroccan nationality, out of a total of 120 employees. This ratio will evolve to 80% after the first three years. This company, owned by the Saudi company ACWA Power, the Moroccan Agency for Solar Energy (Masen), and the Spanish companies Aries and TSK, thus intends to build the largest parabolic trough CSP plant in the world, namely the 160 MW CSP plant in Ouarzazate, which has 3 hours of thermal storage.

In a statement from ACWA Power, its CEO, Paddy Padmanathan, declares that "the award of the EPC contract is in line with the company's development schedule" and should "allow the objective of commercial operation of the plant to be met during the second half of 2015". It should be noted that operation and maintenance will be handled by the company NOMAC, a subsidiary of ACWA Power.

Masen will purchase the electricity produced according to the 25-year Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) signed on 19 November 2012. As a reminder, the 160 MW Ouarzazate CSP plant is the first in a series of plants launched by Masen that will be developed on the Ouarzazate site for a total capacity of 500 MW and using different solar energy technologies.

A first step on the path to exploiting the significant potential that Morocco has in terms of renewable energy resources, which offer sustainable alternatives to the conventional energies on which the country currently depends.

It should be noted that this project respects the ecological criterion. With the use of CSP technology, the project will allow for savings of approximately 470,000 tonnes of CO2 equivalent per year of operation.

Furthermore, it should be noted that a delegation of French senators, of all political persuasions, arrived in Morocco the day before yesterday for a 5-day visit, intended to learn about the progress of the projects launched by the Kingdom for the development of renewable energies. The senators are notably expected to visit the flagship project of the national solar plan, namely the Ouarzazate solar power plant.