Morocco

News

April 2005

Wind Energy Solutions B.V. from the Netherlands has recently sold two completely refurbished WES18 (former Lagerwey LW18/80) wind turbines. The WES18 is a high yielding two-bladed grid connected 80 kW turbine. The two turbines have been shipped to Marokko and will soon be installed near Tangiers at a fish processing plant. The owner has opted for two refurbished wind turbines as a pilot project and he expects to be able to install more new turbines in the near future. The refurbished turbines have a one year warranty and they have been completely refurbished with all moving “wear and tear” parts replaced with OEM parts. contact

GTZ - TERNA Wind Energy Programme

On behalf of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ) GmbH supported the Centre de Developpement des Energies Renouvelables (CDER), in evaluating wind energy options for Morocco. The activities were carried out between 1991 and 2000 within the framework of the GTZ TERNA Wind Energy Programme (www.gtz.de/wind).

Between 1991 and 1994 GTZ and CDER undertook wind measurements on the Atlantic coast and in the north-east of Morocco. The objective of these surveys was to prepare a wind atlas showing suitable locations for wind turbines. The evaluations for the Tétouan region near Tangiers showed locations with mean wind velocities of 11.5 m/s, thus placing them among the best locations in the world.

On the basis of these results the Moroccan power utility Office Nationale d'Electricité (ONE) set up a 3.5 MW demonstration wind farm in the Tétouan region with financial support from Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau (KfW). This was followed in May 2000 by a 50 MW wind farm in the same region, built and operated by a French-Danish consortium following international tendering managed by ONE.

After these two projects had been tackled, a number of international organisations approached ONE and CDER with a view to realising further wind farm projects. ONE thereupon resolved to have further wind measurements conducted at various locations. As part of this campaign GTZ supported CDER from 1997 to 2000 in carrying out wind potential studies in the regions of Essaouira, Tarfaya and Laâyoune on the Atlantic coast. The results were promising: wind velocities of 8 - 9 m/s at a height of 40 m.

For further information

on the Morocco project, see the Project Section at the TERNA web site (www.gtz.de/wind)
on recent developments in the Moroccan electricity sector and on developments in the wind power sector see the June 2004 TERNA study »Energy-policy Framework Conditions for Electricity Markets and Renewable Energies - 21 Country Analyses« available at the TERNA web site (www.gtz.de/wind).

Wind data

The following materials are excerpts from the Wind Regimes of Africa a Comparative Evaluation of Wind Data from Selected Countries by Factor 4 Energy Projects GmbH by courtesy of the author Benjamin Jargstorf. The study is available on download from this site.

Measurements of the Special Energy Programme of GTZ (1992 - 1994)
In co-operation between the Centre de Développement des Energies Renouveables in Marrakech and the Meteorological Service of Morocco a wind atlas (Atlas Eólien) was published in 1986, based on the evaluation of meteorological wind data. In this document, the region around Tangier in North Morocco was indicated with annual average wind speeds from 6 to 6.5 m/s and the region with the best wind regime of Morocco was identified in the Southern Atlantic coast with 7 to 7.5 m/s.
Based on this data, the Special Energy Programme of GTZ (SEP Morocco, compare Section 2.3.3) conducted wind measurements in North Morocco, in Tangiers and in the province Tetouan. Several possible wind park sites were identified, of which one was realized in 1999, with an installed capacity of 50.4 MW (84 x 600 kW). The offi-cial opening was in May 2000, the technical commissioning in autumn 2000 (Box 5). When designing the measurement campaign for site selection, the starting point had been the wind data of the airport of Tangiers with an annual average wind speed of 6.17 m/s in 10 m above ground (see Figure 3-1).

Figure 3-1: Wind data from the airport of Tangier (1978 - 1986)

Opposite to Gibraltar, in the province of Tetouan, a mountain range extends in North-South direction, on which the measurements of the Special Energy Programme in Mo-rocco registered extraordinary high wind speeds: an annual average of 10,94 m/s at 9 m above ground.

For the reference wind turbine E-30 this gives a calculated capacity factor of 52,1% or an annual energy output of 1.574 MWh (Figure 3-2).

Figure 3-2: Wind regime in North Morocco (Koudia Blanco, 1992-1993)

The excellent wind regimes in this region -- similar to Tarifa at the Spanish side -- are the results of airstreams flowing in and out to the Mediterranean Sea. This causes a wind direction distribution as is shown in Figure 3-3 which is extremely favourable for micro-siting, allowing a very narrow spacing of the turbines.

Figure 3-3: Energy output per sector (Koudia Blanco, 1992-1993)

Also other sites in Morocco show a very high wind regime, especially in the Southern part between Dahkla and Laayoume, where annual averages of 9 m/s in 10 m above ground have been registered. The site Noin-Noinch may be considered typical for the North of Morocco. It lies with 6.6 m/s in the medium range and practically does not show any annual variation (Figure 3-8).

Documents

Wind Regimes of Africa Comparative Evaluation of Wind Data from Selected Countries. InWEnt Division Environment, Energy and Water (6099 kB PDF)

Wind forecast

Data presented by Windfinder: Find wind, waves & surf weather, Wind SMS www.windfinder.com