Saudi Arabia’s Acwa Power International and “Sener Ingenieria y Sistemas SA” of Spain have won a $2 billion deal to build two solar power plants in the Southern Moroccan city of Ouarzazate.

Both projects will be constructed in parallel and constitutes the 2nd phase of the development of the Noor Solar Complex, promoted by MASEN, the Moroccan Agency for Solar Energy as part of the Moroccan government plan to produce 2 gigawatts of solar power by 2020, equivalent to about 38 percent of Morocco’s current installed generation capacity.

An ACWA Power led consortium is already constructing the 1st phase of the same complex (160MW Noor I CSP project) and with this new additions will bring the installed capacity at the complex to a total of 510MW, making this the largest solar power complex in the world. The selection of ACWA Power was a result of an international tender, where 4 Consortiums submitted technical proposals in March 2014 and financial offers in September 2014.

The preferred bidder announcement comes after a rigorous evaluation process under the rules of the World Bank, which took in consideration the lowest power tariff for the kilowatt-hour produced, combined with the best state-of-art technical solution provided. In its proposal ACWA Power Consortium also committed to source a minimum of 35% of the scope of the projects by value from the local Moroccan contractors and manufacturing industry as a means of industrial integration and support to the local economy.