Sumitomo Electric, an electric manufacturer basing in Osaka, Japan, has completed the construction on the 1MW concentrator photovoltaic (CPV) power plant in the Kingdom of Morocco. As a pilot CPV project built in partner with the Moroccan Agency for Sustainable Energy (MASEN), the plant will be operating until May 2021 as a five-year experiment.

Sumitomo Electric and MASEN entered into an agreement in May 2016 to jointly build the company’s first megawatt-level pilot CPV power plant using its self-developed CPV systems. After months of developing, the CPV plant, which is located in Ouarzazate City, the Kingdom of Morocco, has been completed, and Sumitomo Electric held a ceremony on November 10 (local time) to celebrate it.

Background

Morocco is a country that enjoys high intense of solar radiation and that is aiming to increase her electricity self-sufficiency. Solar power is obviously the best method to achieve this goal. Accordingly, the Morocco government plans to introduce 2GE and 4.5GW of solar power generation facilities by 2020 and 2030 respectively.

At the Fourth Japan-Arab Economic Forum held on May 4, 2016, Sumitomo Electric won a contract awarded by MASEN to demonstrate on MW-scale CPV plant, following an experiment on its CPV module on the property of its group company located in Casablanca, Morocco, and a demonstration on a 20kW CPV system on the property of the MASEN research institute.

“Encouraged by the successful commencement of this project, Sumitomo Electric will promote its CPV business not only in Morocco but also in other countries, in the Middle East and the rest of the world, that have high solar radiation,” stated by the company in its announcement.