Gov't approves execution of additional wind farm in Gulf of Suez

CAIRO – 11 April 2018: Egypt’s Cabinet approved on Wednesday the request of a consortium including Orascom Construction, France’s ENGIE and Japan’s Toyota Tsusho Corporation to construct an additional 500 MW wind farm in the Gulf of Suez, with a 17 percent lesser tariff than the one imposed on the main project.

The main project, which was awarded to the consortium in a tender, included the construction of a 250 MW wind farm in Ras Ghareb, near the western shore of the Gulf of Suez.

In March, the consortium signed an agreement with the Egyptian Electricity Transmission Co. (EETC) to construct the wind farm.

The project will be executed on a build-own-operate (BOO) basis under a 20-year Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) with EETC.

The investment cost of the project amounts to around $400 million. As per the agreement, the farm will be connected to the national electricity grid experimentally by mid 2019.

Electricity Minister Mohamed Shaker said that the building of the farm comes as part of the ministry’s plan to increase dependency on renewable energy sources so that the ratio of power generation from renewable sources reaches 20 percent of Egypt’s electricity production by 2022, and to 42 percent by 2035.

The wind farm marks the first renewable energy Independent Power Producer (IPP) project of its kind and size in Egypt, according to a March statement by Orascom Construction.

Construction of the plant will take approximately 24 months. Upon completion, the consortium will operate and maintain the wind farm for 20 years.