No blackouts in Egypt by beginning of 2019: electricity spox

CAIRO - 24 July 2018: Power outages will end completely by the beginning of 2019 after the completion of replacement and renewal plan, according to the Ministry of Electricity's spokesman, Ayman Hamza.

Hamza said in a phone call to Al-Hadath Al-Youm satellite channel that any blackouts occurred in the last period came as a result to the current replacement and renewal plan of generation and distribution networks.

In less than two years, the gov­ernment managed to end electrical power shortages and even pave the road for surpluses.

When Abdel Fatah al-Sisi became president in mid-2014, he put a plan to prevent the outages included the construction of eight massive power plants.

Sisi's plan to end the outages in­cludes exploitation of renewable energies. The government actively encouraged the private sector to establish its own solar and wind farms. It installed huge solar panels on the roofs of hundreds of gov­ernment buildings and encourages Egyptians to create solar power plants on their home roofs. Some Egyptians sell electricity produced by their solar panels to the national grid.

In March 2017, three major power plants in the Upper Egypt governorate of Beni Suef, the new Administrative Capital, and Al-Burlus were designed and constructed by the German electronics manufacturing giant Siemens at the cost of $6.4 billion. Each of the plants will produce 4,800 MW of electricity annually at peak operations.

The construction of the power plants came as part of the German conglomerate company Siemens’ €8 billion ($9.4 billion) memorandum of understanding (MoU) to build three cycle gas-fired plants in Egypt.