Egypt invests LE 7.7B to improve performance of electrical network during 20/21

CAIRO - 2 December 2021: The Egyptian Electricity Transmission Company revealed investing about LE 7.7 billion to improve the performance of the electrical network and maintain the level of quality of electrical supply during the fiscal year 2020-2021, with the total amount of energy sold during the year amounting to about 189 billion kWh.

The Minister of Electricity and Renewable Energy,  Mohamed Shaker, stressed - in a statement, Thursday, the sector’s success thanks to the great and effective support of the political leadership in overcoming the challenges it faces. This contributed to stabilizing the national grid and covering the gap between production and demand for electricity.

Shaker referred to the efforts made by the electricity sector to support the transmission network on various efforts; To improve the efficiency of the network and reduce losses to be able to transfer sustainable electric energy from all production sources to all customers, in accordance with international standards through institutional work that adopts the economic operation of production stations, quality policies, optimal use of resources and assets, and preservation of the environment.

For her part, the Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Egyptian Electricity Transmission Company, Sabah Mohamed Mashali, explained that the electricity sector has succeeded in strengthening and developing electricity transmission and distribution networks to absorb and benefit from the large capacities that are added from new and renewable sources.

Mashali said that several projects in the field of overhead lines and transformer stations have been implemented at the high and high voltages at the level of the Republic. The lengths of high voltage lines and cables were increased from 29,469 km to 31,84 km, and the capacities of high voltage transformer stations were increased from 95,315 MVA to 112,208 MVA with an increase of 17.7  percent.

She added that the voltage was placed on 8 new high-voltage transformer stations, and the capacities of the high-voltage transformer stations were increased from 62,534 MVA to 6516,3 MVA. F.A. The lengths of high-voltage lines and cables have also been increased from 22,486 km to 22,770 km, in addition to what has been added of line lengths and capacities of transformer stations to the rest of the efforts, whether it is establishing new projects or expanding existing ones.

In addition, 17 new high voltage stations were added, including 7 500 kV stations. This increased the total capacity by 17.7 percent, and the projects of the three giant production stations (Bani Suef, Burullus, the New Administrative Capital) were connected to 220 and 500 kV.

She explained that the Egyptian Electricity Transmission Company has put out international tenders and selected the best offers submitted by investors with the help of international and local advisory groups, to reach the contribution of the installed capacity of renewable energies to 20 percent of the total installed capacity in 2022, and more than 42 percent of the total generated energies by year 2035.

She indicated that a number of energy purchase agreements were signed for the energy produced from renewable energy plants (for a period of 20 years for wind energy projects and 25 years for solar energy projects) with a total capacity of 3,665 MW.

She indicated that negotiations are underway and the contract is being completed at the present time on a number of projects from solar and wind energy, with a total capacity of about 2350 megawatts, of which about 1,800 megawatts are from wind energy, and about 550 megawatts are from solar energy.

She pointed out that by completing the contract for the projects being negotiated, the total capacity of the existing renewable energies that are being finalized will be about 9,973 megawatts, which represents about 31.3 percent of the maximum load for the year 2020/2021, which is about 31,900 megawatts.

The head of the company pointed out that a new national control is being established in the Administrative Capital, where in December 2020, the contract was signed with the alliance of Siemens Germany, Siemens Egypt and Hassan Allam, with a total cost of about 850 million pounds and a period of implementation of 24 months from the date of the contract.

Mashali stressed that the Egyptian Electricity Transmission Company is keen to support and develop the unified national grid to make Egypt a regional center for energy exchange between countries by supporting the existing regional interconnection projects between Jordan, Libya and Sudan, as well as the planned interconnection projects with Saudi Arabia, Cyprus, and the Interconnection Authority Gulf, Cyprus and Greece.