Egypt’s Electricity & Energy Ministry has signed three memorandums of understanding (MoUs) for more than 12GW of new power capacity at the Egypt Economic Development Conference (EEDC) in Sharm el-Sheikh.

The agreements were signed with two Chinese companies and a UK investment firm at the event on 15 March. The projects will have a combined total of about $19bn.

The 12,620MW will be developed under three agreements, with the UK’s Tharwa investments planning to develop the largest single-site coal-fired plant in the world, which will have a total capacity of 6,000MW and a construction cost of $10.6bn.

For the second-largest proposed scheme, China’s Shanghai Electric signed an agreement to develop a 4,640MW coal-fired facility, which will have an estimated total value of $6.4bn.

China’s Dongfang Electric Corporation signed a MoU with the state utility to develop a 1,980MW coal-fired plant, which will have a total value of about $3bn.

At the previous day of the conference, Saudi Arabia’s Acwa Power international signed an MoU to develop $7bn of coal-fired power generation facilities in Egypt. The facilities will be built over two phases, each of 2,000MW, resulting in a total capacity of 4,000MW. The coal plants will be developed under an independent power project (IPP) model.

The project is currently in the feasibility stage, and it is hoped that studies will be completed by the end of 2015.

The coal projects are part of Cairo’s efforts to meet rapidly growing demand for electricity, which has led to summer, and even winter, blackouts in the past couple of years.

In addition to the 16,620MW of MoUs signed for coal projects, the Electricity & Energy Ministry and the Egypt Electricity Holding Company have also signed agreements for a number of other major generation projects at the development conference.

Acwa Power and the UAE’s Masdar signed an MoU to develop combined-cycle and renewable energy projects worth more than $6bn on 14 March.

The projects include 2,000MW of conventional combined-cycle power plants, 1,000MW of solar power facilities and also wind power facilities. The projects are planned to be developed under the IPP model.

During the same day, Germany’s Siemens signed a contract to build the 4.4GW combined-cycle Beni Suef power plant and an agreement to develop 2GW of wind power throughout Egypt. Siemens also signed an agreement to work on a proposal for developing an additional 6.6GW of combined-cycle power generation facilities in the future.