Morocco assessments floating photo voltaic panels to avoid wasting water, generate energy
By Ismail Bellaouali
Tangier, Morocco (AFP) Aug 30, 2025
Solar-baked Morocco, grappling with its worst drought in many years, has launched a pilot venture geared toward slowing water evaporation whereas concurrently producing inexperienced power utilizing floating photo voltaic panels.
At a serious reservoir close to the northern metropolis of Tangier, 1000’s of so-called “floatovoltaic” panels defend the water’s floor from the blazing solar and soak up its gentle to generate electrical energy.
Authorities plan to energy the neighbouring Tanger Med port complicated with the ensuing power, and if it proves successful, the expertise may have far wider implications for the North African kingdom.
In keeping with official figures, Morocco’s water reserves misplaced the equal of greater than 600 Olympic-sized swimming swimming pools daily to evaporation between October 2022 and September 2023.
Over that very same interval, temperatures averaged 1.8C larger than regular, which means water evaporated at the next fee.
Alongside different components like declining rainfall, this has diminished reservoirs nationwide to about one-third of their capability.
Water ministry official Yassine Wahbi mentioned the Tangier reservoir loses round 3,000 cubic metres a day to evaporation, however that determine greater than doubles within the sizzling summer season months.
The floating photovoltaic panels will help minimize evaporation by about 30 %, he mentioned.
The water ministry has mentioned the floating panels signify “an essential acquire in a context of more and more scarce water sources”, even when the evaporation they cease is, for now, comparatively marginal.
Evaluation research are underway for an additional two comparable initiatives in Oued El Makhazine, at certainly one of Morocco’s largest dams within the north, and in Lalla Takerkoust close to Marrakesh.
Related expertise is being examined in France, Indonesia and Thailand, whereas China already operates a few of the world’s largest floating photo voltaic farms.
– ‘Pioneering’ –
Because the Moroccan pilot programme started late final yr, greater than 400 floating platforms supporting a number of thousand panels have been put in.
The federal government desires extra, planning to succeed in 22,000 panels that will cowl about 10 hectares on the 123-hectare Tangier reservoir.
As soon as accomplished, the system would generate roughly 13 megawatts of electrical energy — sufficient to energy the Tanger Med complicated.
Authorities even have plans to plant bushes alongside the banks of the reservoir to scale back winds, believed to exacerbate evaporation.
Local weather science professor Mohammed-Stated Karrouk known as it a “pioneering” venture.
He famous, nevertheless, that the reservoir is just too giant and its floor too irregular to cowl fully with floating panels, which may very well be broken with fluctuating water ranges.
Official information exhibits water reserves fed by rainfall have fallen by practically 75 % previously decade in contrast with the Nineteen Eighties, dropping from an annual common of 18 billion cubic metres to solely 5.
Morocco has thus far primarily relied on desalination to fight shortages, producing about 320 million cubic metres of potable water a yr.
Authorities intention to broaden manufacturing to 1.7 billion cubic metres yearly by 2030.
Karrouk mentioned an pressing precedence needs to be transferring surplus water from northern dams to areas in central and southern Morocco which are extra impacted by the years-long drought.
The dominion already has a system dubbed the “water freeway” — a 67-kilometre canal linking the Sebou basin to the capital Rabat — with plans to broaden the community to different dams.
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