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A consortium led by French utility giant Engie has signed a power purchase agreement (PPA) with the Egyptian Electricity Transmission Company (EETC) for the development of a 900 megawatts (MW) onshore wind farm near Ras Shokeir in the Gulf of Suez, Egypt.
The project will be developed under a 25-year build-own-operate (BOO) scheme by the consortium comprising Engie (35 percent), Egypt’s Orascom Construction (25 percent) and Aeolus (40 percent), according to an Engie press statement. Aeolus is the renewable energy platform of Japan's Toyota Tsusho Corporation.
Orascom Construction will execute civil works, electrical balance-of-plant scope and supply selected local components for the project.
Engie said financial close is expected in the third quarter of 2026, with delivery of the first wind turbines planned by the end of 2026.
The project will be commissioned in phases, with the first 300 MW scheduled to start operations in December 2027 and full commercial operation of the 900 MW wind farm targeted for mid-2028.
Once completed, the project will become Engie's largest onshore wind farm globally, exceeding the group’s 846 MW Assurua wind complex in Brazil.
The Ras Shokeir project will also be Engie's third wind farm in Egypt and will increase the group’s installed wind capacity in the country to nearly 2GW.
The consortium has previously developed two BOO onshore wind projects in Egypt - the 650 MW Red Sea Wind Energy project and the 262.5 MW Ras Ghareb wind farm - with a combined capacity of 912.5 MW.
In March 2023, JBIC had provided $240 million in project finance for the Red Sea Wind Energy project.
(Writing by SA Kader; Editing by Anoop Menon)
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