THINKING SPACE NATURE
WITH THE POWER OF THE DESERT SUN
The future belongs to solar energy. Especially in the driest regions of the world. “Noor” – light – is the name of the world’s largest solar power plant, which is currently being built in Morocco.
Around the globe, solar cells on roofs, on building facades or in fields have long been part of the standard energy-generating repertoire. But the sheer diversity of the ways in which the sun’s energy will be transformed in the future into electricity, heat and fuel is something that anyone who visits the huge construction site near the city of Quarzazate in southern Morocco will discover. Here – in the middle of this hot and dry rocky desert landscape – the sun burns for many hours a day. Optimal conditions for supplying more than one million people in the region with electricity in the future.
SUNNY PROSPECTS
The project’s completion is not far off. All three solar-thermal power plants and an additional photovoltaic power station are due to be connected to the power grid by 2020. The special feature of the four Noor power plants is that the heat of the day is stored in liquid salt to ensure that Moroccans are supplied with electricity even at night. More details about the largest solar complex in the world in our photo gallery:
This large-scale project is being built on an area covering 3,000 hectares. This corresponds roughly to the size of 4,200 football fields. The plant is going to play a major role in Morocco’s energy transition away from fossil fuels.
Parabolic trough on the NOOR I solar field of Ouarzazate Solar Power Station, Morocco, October 2016. Copyright notice: KfW photo archive / Dawin Meckel / OSTKREUZ
Water vapour or liquid salt transfers the heat to a ground-level turbine, which turns it into electricity. Per power plant, half a million parabolic mirrors are arranged in 400 rows.
Parabolic trough on the NOOR I solar field of Ouarzazate Solar Power Station, Morocco, October 2016. Copyright notice: KfW photo archive / Dawin Meckel / OSTKREUZ
In both parabolic-trough-type power plants, the gutter-shaped mirrors automatically adjust themselves to the position of the sun. The mirrors focus the sunlight and concentrate it on a tube, in which it heats up the oil to nearly 400° Celsius.
Parabolic trough on the NOOR I solar field of Ouarzazate Solar Power Station, Morocco, October 2016. Copyright notice: KfW photo archive / Dawin Meckel / OSTKREUZ
Another showcase project with a 150-megawatt output is the Noor heliostat power plant, which is the second largest in the world. It was built from 2016 to 2018.
The heliostat power plant under construction at the NOOR III solar field of the Quarzazate Solar Power Plant, Morocco, October 2016. Copyright notice: KfW photo archive / Dawin Meckel / OSTKREUZ
In the heliostat power plant, thousands of mirrors reflect the sunlight onto the top of a 240-metre-high solar tower in the centre of the plant. The light causes the temperatures in the tower’s combustion chamber to rise to several hundred degrees Celsius.
The heliostat power plant under construction at the NOOR III solar field of the Quarzazate Solar Power Plant, Morocco, October 2016. Copyright notice: KfW photo archive / Dawin Meckel / OSTKREUZ