Aswan solar power project brightens Egypt’s energy outlook
By 2018, Upper Egypt will be home to Egypt’s largest and first-of-its-kind grid-connected solar power park.
About 25 miles north of Egypt’s southern governorate of Aswan, dozens of workers are racing against time to complete the North African country’s largest and first-of-its-kind grid-connected solar power park.
The $3.5 billion project, which is located in Aswan’s village of Benban, consists of 41 solar power plants with a total capacity of 1.8 gigawatts. The project began in 2015 and will be completed by 2018.
“With the completion of this project, Aswan will become the country’s solar energy capital and will constitute a new energy basket in the Middle East region,” said Mohamed el-Husseini, the head of the Investment Unit in Aswan governorate and one of the supervisors of the project.
Husseini added that the project is expected to be one of the largest solar generation facilities in the world and would make a dramatic turnaround in the field of renewable energy in Egypt. “The Benban project will transform the country’s energy sector, fulfill energy self-sufficiency and solve Egypt’s power crunch for good,” Husseini told Al-Monitor.
