[In Video]: Morroco just unveiled Africa's largest solar power plant and it is spectacular

With the clock ticking for climate change, countries across the globe are facing pressure to reduce dependency on fossil fuels. Taking a step in this regard, Morroco just unveiled a massive solar power project in the heart of the Sahara desert.

Touted to be one of the largest solar power facilities in the world - and the largest in Africa - the plant is expected to cover an area of roughly 6,000 acres. The project, which will be completed by 2018, has an electricity generation target of 580 megawatts - higher than world's largest solar power project, the Ivanpah Solar Power Facility in California, which has a target of 392 MW.

The Ivanpah Solar Power Facility in California.(Photo: Wiki Commons)

Once in full operation the plant will help to provide power to about 1.1 million people.

A monumental site

The first section of the Ouarzazate plant contains around 800 rows of panels embellished with 500,000 solar mirrors to soak in the sun.

However, the plant will only be able to generate 160 megawatts of the plant's total 580 megawatt capacity for now as only one section- named a Noor 1 was put into action on 5 February. Noor 1 was reportedly inaugurated by King Mohammed VI.

Reducing dependency on imports

Presently Morroco imports around 97 per cent of its power. But the nation is hopeful about extracting 42 per cent of its power from renewables by 2020, a full third of which will be solar.

Photo: Getty Images.

"We are not an oil producer," Hakima el-Haite, Morocco's environmental minister, told the Guardian in an interview. "We import 94% of our energy as fossil fuels from abroad, and that has big consequences for our state budget ... We also used to subsidize fossil fuels which have a heavy cost, so when we heard about the potential of solar energy, we thought, why not?

The other two sections, Noor 2 and Noor 3 of the power plant, are expected to open by 2018.

According to experts, there is no better place to harness the sun than the desert. Madhya Pradesh will house the world's largest solar power station in Rewa district. The station - built across an area over 1,500 hectares at Bandwar region in Gudh tehsil of Rewa - will generate 750MW of power when completed in March 2017 - the proposed date.