Tuesday, April 10, 2018

Morocco's giant Solar Farm Looks Promising

by Salman Hameed


If you are looking for natural resources, then an unblocked Sun is definitely a good one. Here in Massachusetts, we keep waiting for it. But Morocco is taking advantage of it. It has built a huge Solar plant called Noor Power Station near the city of Ouarzazate, located on a plateau in the Atlas Mountains. The Plant uses moveable concave mirrors to follow the Sun and to concentrate the light to central processing system. It is built for $9 billion and the question is how long will it take to pay it back? The project seems promising (they are on the 3rd stage of the project that involves a huge tower - the largest structure in Africa) and is part of a larger scheme to power not just North-Africa, but also Europe (the plant is built primarily by a Spanish company). Below is a nice short (seven minute) clip from PBS that covers the promise and perils of this project. Oh - and one of the many cool things about the city if Ouarzazate: You may already be quite familiar to it. It is a favorite spot for movies like The Last Temptation of Christ, Lawrence of Arabia, The Mummy, among many others, were shot here.

Even Daenerys Targaryen passed through the city. 


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