Design and construction of the 1st 100% Moroccan "Fresnel" type concentrated solar installation
The Research Institute for Solar Energy and New Energies (Iresen) has announced the completion of the first pre-industrial concentrated solar installation in Morocco, based on Fresnel technology and set up in the "Green Energy Park" test, research and training platform in Ben Guerir.
This achievement is the culmination of the "Chams1" R&D project, the result of the collaboration of the energy and renewable energies team of the National Higher School of Arts and Crafts of Meknes of the Moulay Ismail University, and two industrial partners, namely the company "Inter Tridim", specialising in metal construction (Morocco) and the company Aqylon (France), the Institute specified in a press release received on Thursday by the MAP.
It continued: this consortium has entirely developed this technology and has reached a percentage of local industrial integration of more than 90% in the completion of the pre-industrial pilot now installed in the Green Energy Park platform of Ben Guerir.
The installation that this consortium has been able to develop will allow for the optimisation of the performance of the solar field and the reduction of costs to less than 1000 DH/m², designed and built almost entirely in Morocco (more than 90% industrial integration), knowing that the current average price is higher than 2000 DH/m², the Institute reports.
Financed by Iresen, this achievement is part of a large R&D programme supported by the same institute to accompany the national energy strategy led by the Ministry of Energy, Mines, Water and Environment, involving several researchers and doctoral students and aiming in the medium term at the exploitation of the solar field in various industrial applications, such as air conditioning, heating and steam production.
The first application will be developed within the framework of the "Coldsun" project, supported by the same consortium and also financed by Iresen within the framework of the Innotherm III call for projects. The goal of this project is to build, in the next two years, the first Moroccan industrial thermodynamic solar power plant with a capacity of 300 KW intended specifically for air conditioning.
This innovative project is also part of the Innotherm I call for projects, the objective of which is to encourage researchers and industrialists in the design and construction of technical, innovative and 100% Moroccan solutions using thermodynamic solar energy, the press release added.
Launched in January 2013, the main objective of the "Chams1" project was the development of the first innovative, low-cost, and 100% Moroccan Fresnel-type concentrated solar field, according to the press release.
