The Egyptian Electricity Transmission Company (EETC) will sign a power purchase agreement with Siemens Gamesa within weeks.
The cabinet approved at its last meeting to contract with the German company to implement wind farms with a total capacity of 500MW under the BOO scheme and the same contractual terms of the previous tender.
A source at the Ministry of Electricity told Daily News Egypt that the cabinet approved an offer by Siemens to launch two wind power plants, the first with a capacity of 180MW and the other of 320MW.
The source added that the Marubeni alliance will secure the required funding for the implementation of the first phase of the project from Japanese institutions, including the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA). The funding of the second phase is still under negotiation with international bodies.
The source pointed out that the EETC will initially sign the power purchase agreement of the project’s first phase calculated based on average wind speeds in the area of the stations, and then it will sign the second phase’s agreement. Siemens Gamesa offered to sell energy at 3.1-3.8 piasters per kw.
This project is among the 2,000MW wind power plants agreed upon during the Sharm El Sheikh Economic Conference in 2015. The German company obtained land for the implementation of only two phases of the project so far.
The total capacity produced from wind power plants implemented by Siemens Gamesa in Egypt is 1,000MW.
Egypt plans to generate 20% of its energy from renewable resources by 2022. Egypt’s current power production is about 50,000MW, of which about 2,400MW from hydropower, about 1,000MW from wind, and 170MW from solar energy.
