- Egypt authorities are betting on seawater desalination to meet the needs of the new towns being built in the northwest of the country.
- EEHC aims to achieve a total capacity of 250 MW with an investment of $270 million.
The Egyptian Electricity Holding Company (EEHC) is embracing thermodynamic solar energy for desalination purposes and has initiated the second phase of a tender process. This aims to build five concentrated solar power (CSP) plants through a public-private partnership (PPP). Several companies, including Aqualia from Spain, Scatec from Norway, Engie from France, Amea Power from the United Arab Emirates, and Toyota Tsusho from Japan. These places have been chosen after pre-qualification. These power stations will connect to Egypt’s national grid and provide clean electricity for 25 years to support desalination plants capable of producing 400,000 cubic meters of water per day. This marks Egypt’s entry into the concentrated solar power production field, complementing its existing focus on photovoltaic solar energy and onshore wind power.
Egypt has been a strong performer in renewable energy in Africa, it has primarily concentrated on photovoltaic solar energy and onshore wind power until now. However, Egypt possesses the necessary resources to establish thermodynamic solar power plants. Although CSPs have a slightly higher installation cost compared to photovoltaic solar power plants, they are more efficient as they can generate electricity even after sunset.
Egypt began exploring CSPs a few years ago and formed a partnership in 2019 with Smart Engineering Solutions, a company based in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, with plans for an initial investment of $1.2 billion. They plan to build five power plants and a component manufacturing factory. However, no plants have been commissioned to date. In the meantime, other companies like Absolicon Solar Concentrator from Sweden are expressing interest in the Egyptian thermodynamic solar energy market. They plan to launch a solar collector production line in 2024 for Creative Power Solutions (CPS) in Switzerland.