OCP Green Energy has switched on a large battery storage system at its mining site in Benguerir, capable of storing electricity for up to five hours to work alongside the site’s existing solar plant, supplying power when solar output drops and during peak-demand hours, 7News Morocco reports. The 25 MW/125 MWh lithium iron phosphate battery is expected to cut electricity costs at the site by 25 percent during peak hours, while also helping the grid by regulating frequency and managing reactive power.
OCP Green Energy, the renewable energy arm of OCP Group, invested nearly 170 million dirhams ($18 million) in the project, covering battery equipment, engineering, construction and project management, with an additional $20 million in concessional financing from the Clean Technology Fund, administered by the African Development Bank. Omar Kadir, general manager of OCP Green Energy, described storage as a natural extension of the group’s energy strategy, allowing it to reconcile the variable output of renewable energy with the continuous needs of its industrial platforms while strengthening the reliability of its energy supply. The battery, supplied and commissioned by Envision under a contract signed in late 2025, has an expected service life of 25 years.
The project comes as OCP expands its renewable energy footprint, now operating 202 MWp of solar capacity across three sites: Benguerir, Foum Tizi and Oulad Farès in Khouribga. The group plans to invest $13 billion in clean energy between 2023 and 2027, aiming to run all its industrial operations on clean energy by 2027, reach 5 GW of renewable capacity that year, and at least 13 GW by 2032.
OCP is also working with Mohammed VI Polytechnic University on local battery-materials development, focused on lithium iron phosphate materials made from phosphoric acid drawn from OCP’s phosphate reserves. A company called NGB Materials is building a pilot plant to produce 1,000 tons of LFP cathode material annually, with a target of scaling to 30,000 tons, while UM6P researchers have filed at least seven patents linked to LFP production and battery recycling. OCP and UM6P are separately working with Sumitomo Electric on vanadium-based batteries for longer-duration energy storage.
