French company Voltalia plans to pump $800m to invest in the new and renewable energy sector in Egypt in five years.
Emad Ghaly, the company’s regional director, told Daily News Egypt that they put a plan to build solar power plants in Egypt with capacities up to 300 MW, next to wind farms with a total capacity of 500 MW with investments of $700-800m.
He added that Voltalia agreed with a number of French banks to finance the projects planned, and seeks to expand the implementation of solar and wind stations in West Nile and Gulf of Suez.
The company has contracted with the Egyptian Electricity Transmission Company (EETC) and the New and Renewable Energy Authority (NREA) to launch a 25 MW solar power plant within the feed-in tariff projects in Benabn, Aswan, with plans to increase capacity in the coming days by buying troubled companies.
The government launched the renewable energy feed-in tariff programme in 2014 to establish projects to produce electricity from wind farms and solar power plants with a total capacity of 4,300 MW, with investments of $7bn. This includes 2,300 MW from solar power, including 300 MW from plants that produce less than 500 kW. In addition, the program includes 2,000 MW from wind farms.
Ghaly said that Voltalia is ready to implement new and renewable power plants, and is currently competing for a number of tenders recently offered by the NREA and EETC.
The government allocated 7,650 sqkm for the NREA to set up projects to produce electricity from the sun and wind either by itself or by making it available to the private sector.
The total area allocated to the wind projects in the Gulf of Suez is 1,220 sqkm, sufficient to produce 3,550 MW, 841 sqkm in East Nile to build projects with capacity of 5,800 MW, and 3,636 sqkm in West Nile for wind projects.
A total of 606 sqkm were allocated west of the Nile for the construction of solar energy projects and about 1,290 sqkm in East Nile for the construction of solar power plants.
