Clean and Efficient Energy Project

The development objective of the Clean and Efficient Energy Project for Morocco is to improve the capacity of office national de l'electricite et de l'eau potable (national electricity and water utility company) (ONEE) to supply and dispatch clean electricity and to meet the demand of targeted customers more efficiently in the project area. The project comprises of four components. The first component, support to ONEE's solar photovoltaic (PV) program will finance the first phase of ONEE's solar PV program as public investment and will assist ONEE in transitioning towards private sector financing of solar PV plants in subsequent phases of its program based on lessons learned. It consists of following two sub-components: (i) first phase of ONEE's solar PV program (the Noor-Tafilalt Project) in the project area, and (ii) enabling environment for private participation in distributed PV generation. The second component is planning and dispatching of renewable energies. The scattered location of renewable energy installations throughout a country, even connected to medium voltage grids, has also favored the global trend of creating centralized control centers to coordinate different power supply units and to avoid local problems such as grid congestions. It consists of following two sub-components: (i) renewable energy dispatch center in the project area, and (ii) increasing ONEE's capacity to perform long-term power planning incorporating energy efficiency and technological improvement. The third component is utility demand-side management and revenue protection program. The two main objectives are: (i) to keep nontechnical losses (unmetered consumption) in electricity supply low systematically and, hence, increase the company's billing revenues; and (ii) incentivize customers with time-of-use meters to subscribe to a time-of-use tariff and reduce their consumption during expensive peak hours. It consists of following two sub-components: (i) smart meters program in the...