The Egyptian Electricity Transmission Company (EETC) signed an agreement on Tuesday to establish a wind farm in the Gulf of Suez with the Toyota-Orascom-GD France alliance. The project will generate 250 MW with investments of €250m. Head of the Feed-in-Tariff Unit of the Egyptian Electricity Transmission Company (EETC) Lamia Youssef told Daily News Egypt that EETC will contract with the Toyota alliance to buy produced energy at 3.8 cents per kW/H, noting that financial and technical negotiations have been concluded and the cabinet approved the contract. She added that the Ministry of Electricity will purchase the energy produced from the station for a period of 25 years at the agreed price and that EETC will sell the produced power to distribution companies. The Ministry of Electricity and Renewable Energy has started negotiations with the alliance after the negotiations with another alliance failed. The Ministry of Electricity aims to complete the contract for wind farms and solar power plants in the FiT and tender schemes with a total of 5,000 MW within the coming year. 30 companies have successfully completed financial closure for solar plant projects with a total capacity of 1,600 MW. A number of companies are seeking to unlock funding for wind farms in the FiT and tenders schemes of 1,000 MW. Head of the New and Renewable Energy Authority (NREA) Mohamed El-Khayat said that the authority will make a decision for four wind farms and solar power plants by the end of the year, which will produce a total of 490 MW. He explained that the projects include a wind farm in the Gulf of Suez with a capacity of 200 MW, with four companies competing to implement it, next to another wind farm of 250 MW, for which five companies are competing. NREA will also put forward a tender to establish a solar power plant in Hurghada with a capacity of 20 MW and will decide on the Kom Ombo solar plant of 20 MW before the end of December. He added that the NREA welcomes entry of the private sector and international companies to produce power from renewable sources, where it aims to increase production from wind farms and solar power plants to reach 20% of power from renewable sources by 2022. He noted that NREA is implementing solar power plants and wind farms and does not aim to compete with the private sector, with the target being value added of projects and the jobs they create.
