A consortium led by France/UK’s GDF Suez has submitted the lowest tariff price for the 250MW Gulf of Suez wind project in Egypt.  

GDF Suez, in partnership with Japan’s Toyota Tsusho Corporation (TTC) and local Orascom, submitted a tariff price of $0.041 a kilowatt hour (kWh). The low bid was 9.3 per cent lower than the $0.045 a kWh tariff submitted by the second lowest bidder, a consortium of the UK’s Actis and Mainstream Renewable Power.

Italy’s Enel submitted the third-lowest tariff price of $0.0494 and a consortium of Saudi Arabia’s Acwa Power and Greece’s Terna submitted the final bid of $0.0499 a kWh.

The client for the project is the Electricity & Renewable Energy Ministry. 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.

The tariff prices submitted were lower than many in Egypt’s power sector had expected, with the average levelised cost of electricity (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 low tariff prices submitted in Egypt were due to a combination of factors, including a site location with high wind capacity and low interest rates.

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 (DBO) contracts. Together, they have a capacity of 340MW.

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