Morocco has brought online what its builders describe as the largest operational floating solar plant in Africa, a 13-megawatt installation on a reservoir near the Tanger Med port complex in the north of the country.
What was built
The plant sits on the Oued Rmel dam reservoir, near Ksar Sghir. According to pv magazine, it consists of three floating islands covering 72,870 square meters. SolarQuarter reports nearly 22,000 panels mounted on about 400 floating platforms, with the electricity going to industrial and port facilities run by Tanger Med Utilities.
The project was delivered after a 2023 tender. French group H2air’s construction arm, H2air PX, coordinated the engineering, while a consortium of EnergyDesign, Seaflex and Profloating handled construction, according to pv magazine. Because the reservoir’s level swings by 44 meters, from 35 to 79 meters, the platforms use custom anchoring. The dam also supplies freshwater to nearby communities, so water quality is monitored continuously.
Why floating panels matter for water
Shading the surface reduces evaporation, which SolarQuarter puts at about 30%. That matters in a country that has lived through years of drought, even as dams are fuller this season, as we reported earlier.
A study in npj Clean Energy by researchers at Abdelmalek Essaadi University and Sidi Mohamed Ben Abdellah University looked at 58 Moroccan dams. Per pv magazine’s summary, they lose roughly 909 million cubic meters of water a year to evaporation across about 433 square kilometers of surface. The authors say covering 1% of that surface could contribute meaningfully to national energy needs, though they describe return-on-investment projections as speculative because operating data is limited.
What comes next
African Energy reported on October 13 that the Sebou basin agency ABHS plans a feasibility study for several more floating solar plants, following the Tanger Med project. Capacity, sites and timelines have not been published.
The plant is small next to Morocco’s wider solar ambitions, covered in our look at the country’s energy moment, but it tests a dual-use idea: making power and saving water from the same surface.
Sources: pv magazine, SolarQuarter, pv magazine (study), African Energy
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