Saudi Arabia’s Acwa Power has achieved financial close on the Noor photovoltaic (PV) 1 solar project in Morocco.

MEED reported in November 2016 that Acwa Power had signed an agreement to develop the 177MW Noor PV 1 solar scheme, after the developer had submitted the lowest tariff for the project in May.

Acwa Power had submitted a tariff proposal of 4.797 cents a kilowatt hour ($c/kWh) for the Noor 1 scheme, slightly lower than the 4.81$c/kWh tariff submitted by the second-lowest bidder, the Saudi/Spanish FRV/Abdul Latif Jamil team.

The Noor 1 PV programme will consist of three PV solar installations: Noor Ouarzazate IV, 72MW, Noor Laayoune, 86MW and Noor Boujdour, 19MW.

The Saudi developer will develop the project under a 20-year build-own-operate-transfer (BOOT) scheme, with the Moroccan Solar Agency (Masen) the offtaker for power produced.

Masen is the lender of record for the project, securing financing from Germany’s KfW development bank and a green bond issuance. The project will have a total cost of $220m, with financing secured for $175m debt and $45m equity.

The EPC contract for the scheme is India’s Sterling & Wilson.

Acwa Power’s success in winning Morocco’s first large-scale PV project is the latest of a number of triumphs for the developer in Morocco’s rapidly expanding renewable energy market. Earlier in 2016, the developer completed the 160MW Noor 1 concentrated solar power (CSP) project, Morocco’s largest solar plant to date.

In 2015, the developer was awarded the contracts to develop the Noor 2 and Noor 3 CSP projects, which will have a total capacity of 350MW.

The projects are part of Morocco’s target for 42 per cent of its power to be generated from renewable energy resources by 2020.