Martifer Solar, a subsidiary of Martifer SGPS, and their local partner, EEC Group, were qualified by the Egyptian authorities to develop a 25 MWn solar plant. The companies have signed a MoU with NREA (National Renewable Energy Authority) for availing a 60,26ha land plot in Minya to build the plant.
The Government of Egypt has adopted a feed-in tariff (FiT) program for both solar and wind energy to target 4.3 GW of new renewable capacity to be implemented by 2017. This program is expected to help the government to reach its ambitious target of generating 20 percent of its energy from renewable sources by 2020.
The 2 GW of utility-scale solar under this FiT program will be constructed among three different land plots made available by the government for the developers. Martifer Solar and EEC Group have been granted land in Minya, which is approximately 245 km south of Cairo and is expected to host around 450MW of solar PV plants.
Martifer Solar plans to implement the solar plant using single-axis trackers and expects the project to be ready-to-build and start construction in Q4 2016. All the electricity produced by this PV plant will be injected into the grid and sold through a PPA contract signed with EETC (Egyptian Electricity Transmission Company).
Dr. Mohamed Sobki, Chairman of NREA, said, "The 25MW plant from RA SOLAR consortium will be one of a number of solar projects, totaling 2,000MW, to be built under the first round of the Feed-in-Tariff program in Egypt. We are pleased to sign this MOU (land availing MOU for measurements) together with Martifer Solar and EEC Group and look forward to the project's successful completion and connection to the grid."