The Acciona Group and Swicorp have wrapped up the construction of three PV plants in Egypt, with plans to launch commercial operations in the next few weeks.
Acciona president José Manuel Entrecanales and his Swicorp counterpart Kamel Lazaar inspected the newly-built projects this week, which required US$180 million in investment.
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Representing 186MWp in aggregate capacity (150MW in rated terms), the plants at Egypt’s Benban solar complex (Aswan region) are the work of subsidiaries Acciona Energía and Enara Bahrain Spv Wll.
The firms began construction almost a year ago, a process involving over 1,000 workers. The resulting plants span close to three square kilometres and are equipped with 570,000-plus polycrystalline silicon PV modules, produced by STI Norland.
Put together, the trio should produce power able to satisfy the needs of 150,000 homes, with a 25-year PPA signed in October 2017 with Egyptian state utility EETC.
The projects are supported through Egypt’s second feed-in-tariff round of October 2016, as well as financing from the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation.
Acciona and Swicorp will each own a 50% share of the plants once they become operative. The firms are currently working together on further renewable schemes in Africa and the Middle East, Acciona’s Entrecanales said in a statement on Tuesday.
For Acciona, the Swicorp partnership takes its worldwide PV capacity count past the 1,000MWp mark. In 2018 alone, the Spanish conglomerate made strides with various projects in Mexico and Chile.
The three plants are among the latest additions to the Benban complex, a scheme by the Egyptian government to build 1.8GW in PV capacity through 32 privately-owned plants. The site will also host projects by French developer Voltalia and Scatec Solar.