Discussed: Renewables become ‘indispensable’ part of Egypt’s national electricity mix

CAIRO – 14 December 2021: New and Renewable energy has become an essential and indispensable part of the total capacity of Egypt’s national electricity network, especially after the unprecedented boom that Egypt witnessed in the implementation of projects to generate electricity from renewable energy.

This year, the share of renewable energies in the maximum load reached 31 percent of the total generated energy.

This comes in the framework of the strategy of the Ministry of Electricity and Renewable Energy to bring the contribution of the installed capacities from renewable energies to 20 percent by the end of this year, and more than 42 percent of the total generated energies by 2035.

The Egyptian Electricity Transmission Company has launched international tenders and selected the best offers submitted by investors with the help of international and local advisory groups for a number of projects.

A number of energy purchase agreements were signed for 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 3665 MW, including 1500 MW of wind energy under the BOO system, 1465 MW of solar energy under the system Feeding tariff and 700 MW of solar energy using the BOO system.

A contract was signed to establish wind farm in the Gulf of Suez area with a BOO system at a capacity of 250 megawatt.

Among the projects that were contracted in the field of solar energy, is the solar power plants with photovoltaic cells (PV) in Benban, Aswan, with a feed-in tariff system, at a total capacity of 1465 MW, and the commercial operation of all Benban plants was carried out with 32 projects with a capacity of 1465 MW in November 2019, and another one in Kom Ombo In Aswan, a BOO system with a capacity of 200 MW. And the commercial operation plan in 2023.

Negotiations are underway and the contract is being finalized at the present time on a number of projects from solar and wind energy, with a total capacity of about (2350) MW, of which about (1800) MW are from wind energy, and about (550) MW are from solar energy.

With the completion of the contract for the projects being negotiated, the total capacity of the existing renewable energies that are being negotiated 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.

Egypt is keen to benefit from its resources to expand renewable energy projects and exploit them in electrical interconnection projects, noting that the future requires dealing with many data, including green hydrogen, to contribute to providing energy-saving solutions.

It is planned that the total capacity generated from new and renewable energy plants by 2023 will reach 10,000 megawatts, whether from the sun or wind.