PV Magazine:

The Egyptian Electricity Transmission Company (EETC) has signed an agreement with the International Finance Corporation (IFC) for the development of a 600 MW solar power complex in Egypt’s West Nile province, according to the country’s State Information Service.

“We are glad to be involved in the design and implementation of a project that will pave the way for more private sector investments in renewable energies,” said Muneer Ferozie, IFC regional manager and head of its transaction advisory group for the Middle East and North Africa.

Ferozie said the IFC – the private sector arm of the World Bank Group – will act as a consultant on the project and for all matters related to the EETC program for renewable energy. The international lender and the transmission company did not disclose additional technical or financial details about the planned installations nor provide a timeframe for implementation. The exact location of the complex is also yet to be confirmed.

The EETC launched the tender for the 600MW project in December 2017 with the procurement the country’s first tender for solar under a build-own-operate (BOO) model. In February 2018, it was reported 18 offers had been received by the EETC for the tender, with bidders including Toyota Tsusho, Orascom, NTPC Ltd, EDRA – a consortium led by Scatec Solar and Azuri Power and including GCL New Energy, and a Masdar-Genco consortium. In September, industry sources told pv magazine five companies were still participating in the tender – including Chinese EPC specialist TBEA Sunoasis – with projects ranging in size from 200MW to 500MW of generation capacity.

The EETC announced in September it would accept bids with a maximum tariff of $0.025/kWh for the 600MW project after seeing the price of solar power fall below the $0.03 threshold a month earlier, in a tender for the 200MW Kom Ombo solar project, itself another BOO procurement.

More: Development lender to help Egypt deploy 600 MW of solar in West Nile