A consortium of Saudi Arabia’s Swicorp and Spain’s Acciona Energia will develop three photovoltaic (PV) solar plants under the second round of Egypt’s feed-in-tariff (FIT) programme.

Swicorp and Acciona will each hold a 50 per cent stake in the project company. Acciona is also part of the EPC consortium that will build the plants.

The three plants, which will have a total combined capacity of 150MW, will be developed in the Benban complex in the Aswan region of Egypt. The total value of the PV schemes will be about $180m.

The three identical plants will all have a capacity of 50MW, with construction work scheduled to begin in December 2017. Each plant is expected to take 12 months to build, and will be equipped with 190,774 polycrystalline silicon modules supplied by China’s Jinko Solar technology.

The developer consortium has signed a 25-year power purchase agreement (PPA) with Egyptian Electricity Transmission Company (EETC) under the terms of the second round of Egypt’s FIT programme. The group will receive financing from the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB).

Cairo has achieved noticeably more success with the second round of its FIT round than the initial phase. MEED reported in August that Saudi Arabia’s Saudi Arabia has signed contracts to develop three projects under the FIT second round with a total capacity of 165.5MW, with a total estimated investment of $190m.

The three projects will also be located at Benban, and will have the capacity to generate 67.5MW, 70MW and 28MW individually. The projects are expected to reach financial close by the fourth quarter of 2017, with construction due to start by the end of the year. The plants are due to start operation in 2018. For the 67.5MW project, the local Hassan Allam Holding is Acwa Power’s partner for the scheme.

In May, Saudi Arabia’s Alfanar Energy signed a power purchase agreement (PPA) with EETC to develop a 50MW photovoltaic (PV) solar plant under the second round of the FIT programme. The Saudi company secured $55m in non-recourse financing from the European Bank of Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and the Islamic Corporation for the Development of Private Sector (ICD).

MEED reported in March that three developers had reached financial close for PV IPPs under the first round of Egypt’s ambitious 4.3GW feed-in-tariff renewable energy programme.

The first round of the feed-in-tariff programme had been plagued by a number of problems, from the ongoing currency crisis in Egypt to disputes over the omission of an international arbitration clause in the contracts.

A total of 40 developers were prequalified to participate in the first round of the programme in 2015, but only nine of these signed power purchase agreements (PPAs) with EETC by the deadline in October 2016. Out of these nine, only the above three were able to successfully reach financial close under the conditions of the first round.