The Moroccan Agency for Sustainable Energy (Masen) has published a list of the pre-qualified bidders for the tender for the Noor Midelt III project – a 400 MW solar plant that will be connected to 400 MWh of battery storage.

The list includes:

• A consortium formed by UAE-based Masdar and Taqa Morocco S.A
• Spanish energy company Acciona and Morocco-based Green Of Africa
• Saudi energy giant ACWA Power Company and Morocco-based Nareva Holding
• Spain's Cobra group in partnership with French group Vinci
• French utility EDF in conjunction with Japan's Mitsui & Co., Ltd
• Spanish utility Iberdrola
• UAE-based Kahrabel FZE  and France-based GDF International SA
• China-based State Power Investment Corp. (SPIC) and UAE-based AMEA Power

The tender was originally launched in early August. The project will raise the solar capacity of the Noor Midelt project, which also includes the Noor Midelt I and Noor Midelt II solar plants, to 1.6 GW.

In July, Masen published the list of the 24 bidders that are competing to build the Noor Midelt II project. planned for the Drâa-Tafilalet region in northeastern Morocco, will have 400 MW of capacity. It will include a battery, with two hours of storage.

The Noor Midelt I plant, an 800 MW solar plant combining concentrated solar power (CSP) and PV with five hours of storage capacity, is to be built and operated by EDF Renewables (35%), Abu Dhabi Future Energy CO (30%), Masen itself (25%) and Green Of Africa (10%).