Floating solar offers Morocco’s dams antidote to evaporation loss

<p class="p1"><span class="s1">Moroccan researchers say floating PV (FPV) installations on the country's dams could simultaneously cut evaporation losses and generate electricity, but the country lacks a regulatory framework to enable large-scale deployment.</span></p><p class="font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal leading-[1.7]">Morocco's 58 monitored dams lose approximately 909 million cubic meters of water per year to evaporation across a total surface area of around 433 square km, according to a new floating PV (FPV) study in <em>npj Clean Energy </em>by researchers at Abdelmalek Essaadi University and Université Sidi Mohamed Ben Abdellah (USMBA) in Morocco.</p>
<p class="font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal leading-[1.7]">The paper, &#8220;<a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s44406-026-00025-9" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Techno-economic feasibility analysis of floating photovoltaic systems on 58 Moroccan dams: energy potential, economic viability, and water evaporation</a>,&#8221; finds that covering just 1% of that surface with floating solar panels could make a substantial contribution to Morocco's energy needs, while covering 40% could theoretically meet the country's entire electricity demand of 42.38 TWh recorded in 2023.</p>
<p class="font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal leading-[1.7]">Lead researcher Prof. Aboubakr El Hammoumi said water conservation may represent a stronger immediate policy argument for floating solar than energy generation given Morocco's prolonged drought.</p>
<p class="font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal leading-[1.7]">&#8220;Given Morocco's current context of recurrent drought and increasing water stress in recent years, we believe that water conservation represents a particularly compelling policy driver for FPV systems,&#8221; El Hammoumi told <strong>pv magazine</strong>. &#8220;In the Moroccan context, water conservation could arguably constitute the strongest immediate policy argument for FPV deployment, particularly for reservoirs experiencing significant hydrological stress.&#8221;</p>
<p><strong>Water first</strong></p>
<p class="font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal leading-[1.7]">Morocco’s water reserves have fallen sharply over the past decade compared with earlier decades, according to official Moroccan data cited by Agence France-Presse. The government is pursuing large‑scale desalination as its primary response, targeting 1.7 billion cubic meters of annual desalinated‑water production by 2030. Morocco’s water ministry has said floating solar represents an important gain given the country’s increasingly scarce water resources.</p>
<p class="font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal leading-[1.7]">The most advanced floating PV installation in Morocco is a pilot at the Oued Rmel reservoir near Tangier, launched by Tanger Med Group in collaboration with the Ministry of Energy Transition and Sustainable Development, targeting 13 MW and around 14% of the port complex's energy needs, said El Hammoumi. Last year, Agence France-Presse reported that more than 400 floating platforms supporting several thousand panels had been installed, with the government planning to expand to 22,000 panels covering approximately 10 hectares of the 123-hectare reservoir.</p>
<p class="font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal leading-[1.7]">Solar panels are estimated to reduce evaporation at the site by around 30%. Separately, Energy Handle Maroc commissioned Morocco's first floating solar pilot – a 360 kW installation in Sidi Slimane – with around 800 panels and an estimated annual output of 644 MWh, according to El Hammoumi.</p>
<p><strong>Regulatory gap</strong></p>
<p class="font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal leading-[1.7]">Despite these projects, Morocco has no dedicated regulatory or procurement framework governing floating PV on public hydraulic infrastructure, El Hammoumi said. Procurement models, regulatory guidelines, and coordination between water authorities, energy regulators, and developers still need to be defined before large-scale deployment becomes bankable, he added.</p>
<p class="font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal leading-[1.7]">The study's return on investment projections are described as speculative due to limited operational data. El Hammoumi said a bankable financial model would require documented long-term operations and maintenance costs under real conditions, mooring and anchoring system reliability data under fluctuating water levels, performance degradation rates in aquatic environments, and insurance and lifecycle costs specific to floating PV – none of which are currently well-documented. The Oued Rmel project has not yet produced publicly available operational data to validate or challenge the national model's assumptions, he said.</p>
<p class="font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal leading-[1.7]">The research paper identifies pumped hydro storage linked to existing dam infrastructure as a pathway to address floating PV intermittency. Morocco already operates pumped storage through the 350 MW Abdelmoumen pumped hydro station and the Afourer facility, primarily to support grid flexibility, said El Hammoumi. The specific coupling of floating solar with pumped hydro storage remains at an early or conceptual stage in Morocco, he said.</p>
<p class="font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal leading-[1.7]">Morocco deployed <a href="https://www.pv-magazine.com/2026/02/26/morocco-installs-204-mw-of-utility-scale-solar-in-2025/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">204 MW of new utility-scale solar capacity</a> in 2025, taking cumulative utility-scale capacity to 1.29 GW, and began construction on the <a href="https://www.pv-magazine.com/2026/03/11/morocco-begins-construction-on-305-mw-noor-atlas-solar-program/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">305 MW Noor Atlas solar program</a> in March 2026. The country is targeting a 52% share of renewables in installed electricity capacity by 2030.</p>