Egypt’s Electricity & Renewable Energy Ministry has opened technical and financial bids for the 250MW Gulf of Suez Wind Farm.

Four international and local consortiums, out of the six which prequalified, submitted bids. The financial bids offered a levelised cost of energy (LCOE) of about $0.04 a kilowatt hour (kWh).

The average LCOE for onshore wind ranged between $0.06 a kWh in China and $0.09 a kWh in Africa in 2014, according to the UAE-based International Renewable Energy Agency, making it highly competitive with fossil fuel generation.

The bidders are:

• Toyota (Japan) / GDF Suez (France) / Orascom Construction Industries (local)
• GEK Terna (Greece) / Acwa Power (Saudi Arabia)
• Enel Green Power (Italy)
• Renewable Energy Systems (UK) / Actis (UK)

The project will be developed on a build-own-operate (BOO) basis.

The ministry is now evaluating the bids and expects to make a decision in June 2015.

With Egypt’s New & Renewable Energy Authority (NREA), the ministry is planning more than 1,300MW of wind power in the Gulf of Suez, predominantly on an engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) basis.

This is in addition to the 2,000MW of wind power to be developed under the feed-in tariff scheme. Wind farms will be split between the Gulf of Suez, Zafarana and the Gabal el-Zeit.

NREA awarded Spanish firm Gamesa two projects in Gabal el-Zeit in early 2015 as design-build-operate contracts (DBO). Together, they have a capacity of 340MW.

Gamesa is commissioning a 200MW wind farm in the same area.

Egypt intends to reach 20 per cent of energy generated renewably by 2022, including 7,200MW of wind projects. Egypt has a current wind capacity of about 750MW, with another 1,340MW in the pipeline.