Ouarzazate Solar Power Station


Ouarzazate Solar Power Station, also called Noor Power Station is a solar power complex located in the Drâa-Tafilalet region in Morocco, from Ouarzazate town, in Ghessat rural council area. At 510 MW, it is the world's largest concentrated solar power plant. With an additional 72 MW photovoltaic system the entire project is planned to produce 582 MW at peak when finished and is being built in three phases and in four parts. The total project's estimated cost is around $2.5 billion.
The plant will be able to store solar energy in the form of heated molten salt, allowing for production of electricity into the night.
Phase 1 comes with a full-load molten salt storage capacity of 3 hours. Noor II, commissioned in 2018, and Noor III, commissioned in January 2019, store energy for up to eight hours.
It will cover an area of.
The project is being developed with the help of the Spanish consortium TSK-Acciona-Sener and is the first in a series of planned developments at the Ouarzazate Solar Complex by the Moroccan Agency for Solar Energy. As of December 2015, the plant was expected to begin commercial operation in June 2017.
Water consumption for the Ouarzazate Noor complex is estimated at 2.5 to 3 million m3 per year for one wet- cooling project and two dry – cooling projects, due to the need to clean the reflectors regularly.

Noor I

Ouarzazate Solar Power Station - Phase 1, also referred to as Noor I CSP, has an installed capacity of 160 MW. It was connected to the Moroccan power grid on 5 February 2016.
It covers and is expected to deliver 370 GWh per year.
The plant is a parabolic trough type with a molten salt storage for 3 hours of low-light producing capacity.
The cost of the project when it began operations was $3.9 billion. It uses half a million mirrors.
The design uses wet cooling and the need to regularly clean the reflectors means that the water use is high - 1.7 million m3 per year or 4.6 liters per kWh.
Water usage is more than double the water usage of a wet cooled coal power station and 23 times the water use per kWh of a dry cooled coal power station, though life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions of solar thermal plants show that generating comparable energy from coal typically releases around 20 times more carbon dioxide than renewable sources.
The electricity was to be sold at $0.19 /kWh.
The monthly production of electricity of the power plant Noor I in 2017 in MWh was:
January: 30261.44 ;
February: 19418.25 ;
March: 48605.63 ;
April: 40376.02 ;
May: 45445.62 ;
June: 33369.19 ;
July: 42276.52 ;
August: 30850 ;
September: 41205.18 ;
October: 31973.98 ;
November: 22689.4 ;
December: 27628.56.

Noor II

Noor II CSP is the second phase of the Ouarzazate Solar Power Station.
It is a 200 MW CSP solar plant using parabolic troughs.
It has a 7 hours storage capacity.
It covers an area of and is expected to supply 600 GWh per year.
Construction started in February 2016 and the plant was commissioned in January 2018.
It uses a dry cooling system to decrease water use.

Noor III

Noor III CSP is the third part of the Ouarzazate Solar Power Station. It is a 150 MW gross CSP solar project using a solar power tower with 7 hours energy storage.
It covers an area of and it is expected to supply 500 GW·h per year.
It uses a dry cooling system to decrease water use.
The CSP tower mirror field was commissioned in March 2018.
Noor III is the fifth ever built utility-scale CSP tower, but the second with energy storage, after the 125 MW gross Crescent Dunes. At 150 MW Noor III is now the most powerful CSP tower unit built.
In September 2018 the CSP tower unit was first time synchronized to the power grid. In December Noor III completed a 10-day reliability test demonstrating that the project can provide continuous rated power even in the absence of sunlight. The model HE54 heliostat has 54 mirrors with a total reflective surface of.
The solar field has 7400 of such mirrors. The tower is high.

Noor IV

Noor IV will be a 72 MW photovoltaic power station. The total investment in this project is 750 million MAD.