- Construction works of the Gulf of Suez wind farm in Egypt is set to be complete by October according to New and Renewable Energy Authority (NREA) Executive Chairperson, Mohamed El-Khayat.
- Mohamed El-Khayat said that the project is 85% complete while the rest of the work 15% is expected to be done by October and trial operation set to begin in November this year.
- Commercial operation is to start before the end of this year.
The Gulf of Suez wind farm is been developed by a trio of elite companies known as Toyota-Orascom-GDF Alliance. The companies are Egypt’s Orascom Construction, France’s GD France, and Japan’s Toyota.
The project is been developed with financial assistance from the European Investment Bank (EIB), the European Union, the French Development Agency (AFD), and the German Agency for International Cooperation (GIZ).
Under the supervision of the New and Renewable Energy Authority (NREA) of Egypt, the project is built in terms of Build-Own-Operate (BOO) system, a project delivery mechanism in which a government entity sells the right to construct and operate a project for a specified time to a private-sector party, according to agreed design specifications.
The wind farm is located on the west coast of the Red Sea in Egypt, about 150 km north of Hurghada. The farm will have an installed capacity of 200 MW, generating 650 GWh per annum when complete. This equates to 289 955t less CO2 entering the atmosphere every year.
El-Khayat pointed out to Daily News Egypt that renewable energy beats traditional energy in terms of cost easing the burden on the general budget. Furthermore, he noted that recent economic reforms, for example the liberalization of local exchange rate and fuel subsidy cuts allows the government to adopt the BOO scheme, in which the Egyptian Electricity Transmission Company (EETC) is committed to purchase the energy produced according to the contract price.
The PPA term is 20 years.
Author: Bryan Groenendaal
