Egypt Inaugurates Africa's Largest Solar Power Plant

Egypt inaugurated on Saturday the "Abydos 1" solar power plant in the Kom Ombo desert in Aswan Governorate in cooperation with the Emirati company "Amea Power", with a capacity of 500 megawatts, with investments amounting to $500 million.

According to a statement by the Egyptian Cabinet, the solar plant includes about 64 conversion stations in addition to the two largest main converters of their kind in Africa and the Middle East, each with a capacity of 300 megawatts.

The station is also built on an area of ​​10,000 sqm, and includes more than one million solar cells and 1920 sub-converters.

Hussein Al Nowais, Chairman of the Board of Directors of "Amea Power", said that the station's investments amount to $500 million, financed by the International Finance Corporation (IFC) of the World Bank Group, the Dutch Development Bank (FMO), and the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA). The general contractor for the project is the Chinese company Power China.

Egypt also signed two agreements today with "Amea Power" to implement a 500 megawatt wind farm project in the Gulf of Suez with investments amounting to $600 million.

This comes in light of the Egyptian state's efforts to achieve the target of 42% of the energy mix from renewable energy sources by 2030.

The North African country suffered for a whole year starting in July 2023 from a crisis of repeated power outages due to the lack of fuel needed to operate the stations amid rising temperatures and increased consumption, coinciding with a dollar shortage that the country has suffered from for two consecutive years.

Egyptian Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly said today that the state has developed a plan for the necessary resources to provide the fuel needed to stabilize the electricity grid to ensure that the load shedding schedule does not return.