ACWA Power reported a forced outage at the Noor 3 solar power plant in Morocco on March 21, caused by a leak in the hot molten salt tank.

The preliminary analysis indicates that the forced outage will last until November 2024, the Saudi-listed company said in a statement.

The outage at the 150-megawatts (MW) Noor Ouarzazate III concentrated solar power (CSP) project is result in a revenue loss of $47 million for the Saudi company, which has a 75 percent stake in the project company.

The company has taken measures to repair the tank and potentially build a new tank, the statement added.

The greenfield IPP, which was built at the cost of $862 million, became operational in the fourth quarter of 2018, according to ACWA Power website.

It was constructed under a turnkey Engineering Procurement Construction (EPC) contract by the consortium (SENER Ingeneria Sistemas (Spain), SEPCO III Electric Power Construction Corporation (China) and Power China (China).

A Reuters report on Monday, quoting sources, said technical problems had stopped all output at the plant for a year from summer 2021.

(Editing by Anoop Menon) (anoop.menon@lseg.com)

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