Egypt through the french energy company, Voltalia has launched the construction of the Râ 32 MW solar power plant within the world’s largest solar complex.
Voltalia, an international player in renewable energies, announces the beginning of the construction of Râ Solar, its first solar power plant in Africa which will be located in Ben Ban complex, in the Aswan region (Upper Egypt).
The Râ solar power plant
As part of their participation to the Africa Investments Forum in Paris, the company said the project is set to benefit from a 25-year power sales contract with the state-owned Egyptian Electricity Transmission Company (“EETC”), which will come into effect starting from the commissioning of the plant, scheduled for H2 2019.
The Râ Solar will be equipped with 93,150 Suntech photovoltaic panels of a 345 W unit capacity mounted on a single axis with trackers and, at peak, around 150 people will be working on the construction site.
Benban solar PV complex
With a 1.8 GW capacity, the Benban solar PV complex is the world’s largest solar cluster.It is a part of Egypt’s Nubian Suns Feed-in Tariff program, which is a major initiative aimed at influencing private sector capital and expertise, to support the goal of generating 20% electricity from renewable resources by the year 2022.
It will contribute to achieve the 2 GW target of solar installed capacity set by Egypt within the scope of the Paris Agreement in 2015. In addition, the overall Benban cluster is expected to avoid 2 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions per year while improving access to an affordable and clean energy in Egypt.
Phase one of the solar project and the country’s first largescale photovoltaic power plant was inaugurated in March last year. It consists of 200,000 solar panels and 780 sun trackers that allow the panels to move relative to the suns position throughout the day enabling maximum efficiency of the facility. Developed by German Ib Vogt and Infinity Solar Systems, a local company the plant began its operation/ supplying the national grid in December producing an output of 64.1mwp.
Also Read:Egypt inaugurates first phase of Benban solar park
Voltalia is currently developing many projects in Africa. In Egypt, the Group has announced its ambition to develop a 800 MW portfolio in the next 5 to 8 years, for its own account and for third-party clients.
