A consortium of Egyptian investors consisting of three local banks, two local companies and two international companies have offered to construct four solar powered electricity stations each with a capacity of 50 megawatts (mW ).
Each station is expected to cost US$90-100 million with an expected rate of return of 14 percent; this is according to Wael Al-Nashar, the CEO of OneraSystems, one of the companies in the consortium. The Egyptian ministry of Electricity is currently accepting offers by investors to produce electricity through wind or solar, and the companies have presented their offer to the ministry to be decided by 26th November.
The Ministry of Electricity is only accepting offers to produce a total of 2000mW in renewable energy and is not expected to approve all the four proposed solar power stations as there are other bidders.
The Egyptian cabinet in September approved feed-in tariffs for renewable energy production, enabling the solar energy producers to sell electricity to the government. The consortium will sell its electricity at 14.34 cents per kilowatt per hour for the maximum production tranche of 50mW.
Land for the projects will be provided to the private investors at competitive prices with the land for solar power and wind energy projects offered for use for 25 years and 20 years respectively.
These are parts of the Egyptian Government’s recovery plans from the energy crunch the country has suffered for the last four years. President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi seeks to find a solution by encouraging investments in electricity production.
