New power station with self-initiated finances

Egypt's Minister of Power Hassan Younis asserted that the ministry's forthcoming program for establishing power stations will depend mainly on self-initiated finances from the electricity sector resources besides grants and easy-term loans offered by the international organisations and donor countries.

Younis said that resorting to the B.O.T. system will only be in cases of lack of foreign funding resources and according to controls laid by the Cabinet. In this regard, Egypt and Denmark signed early in the week a contract to carry out the second stage of the power generating project from renewed and renewable energy in the Gulf of Suez, Zaafarana wind generating station.

The 2nd phase of the project will be financed by the Danish Development Programme Agency (DANIDA), slated for completion in October 2003 with a total productive capacity of 125 million Rw/hr. annually and with a potential capacity of 600 M/W up till 2010 providing about 4 per cent of Egypt's total needs of clean energy.

The Danish side contributes by 183 million krone (L.E. 110 million), 30 million of which is a non-refundable grant while the rest is in the form of soft-loans. The Egyptian side contributes by 30 per cent of the projects' equipment and devices which are locally manufactured in Egyptian workshops and plants.

The second stage of the project includes establishing 46 aerial turbines, the capacity of each is 660 kilowatt producing 130 million kilowatt/hour annually of clean electric energy.