Chinese inverter manufacturer Sungrow announced on May 7 that it has secured a contract to supply inverters for the 200MW Kom Ombo PV power plant in Egypt. The Kom Ombo PV power plant is currently the largest of its kind to date in North Africa. Its generation capacity is sufficient to the meet the power demand of around 130,000 households. Once up and running, the clean and renewable electricity that it will be producing will contribute to the filling of the growing power supply gap in Egypt and help the country transition to a low carbon economy.
The Kom Ombo PV power plant is located in a desert area within Aswan Governorate. The temperature at the site can reach up to nearly 60°C in the summer. This project therefore needs an inverter that can operate reliably in this harsh environment. Sungrow’s SG250HX-IN-20 inverter and medium-voltage turnkey station MVS50-LV both feature smart forced air-cooling technology and attain the high international standards for protection (i.e., C5 and IP66).
The signing of the inverter contract followed the signing of the EPC contract between project developer ACWA Power that is based in Saudi Arabia and EPC firm Sterling & Wilson that is based in India. ACWA operates in 13 countries across the the Middle East, Africa, and Southeast Asia. It builds various types of power plants as well as desalination facilities. Sterling & Wilson promotes itself as a solution provider that emphasizes the quality of engineering. The EPC contract was inked in February and worth US$127.5 million. The press release from Sungrow does not disclose the value of the inverter contract.
The Kom Ombo PV power plant is the latest among the PV projects in Egypt that attain the level of 100MW in generation capacity. It should be noted that most of these projects are concentrated in Aswan Governorate. According to the Integrated Sustainable Energy Strategy of the Egyptian government, the share of the country’s electricity supply based on renewable generation will be raised to 20% by 2022 and 42% by 2035.