There’s some interest in Egypt’s concentrated solar power projects: Three consortiums have submitted financial and technical proposals to establish five concentrated solar power (CSP) stations on Egypt’s North Coast to power desalination plants, Al Mal reports, citing sources it says have knowledge of the matter. The three consortiums include an alliance between Egypt’s Platform and an unnamed Chinese company, Smart Engineering Solutions (SES) and Germany’s Frenell, and Orascom Construction and an unnamed foreign partner.

Too little time, not so many bids: The tender attracted low interest due to time constraints, even though the window for receiving offers was extended twice from September to December, the sources tell Al Mal. The technical offers will take two months to evaluate and the financial offers take into consideration potential price adjustments due to changes in the exchange rate and material costs, the news outlet added.

We knew this was in the works: Seven consortiums bought the tender and conditions booklet for the planned renewables-powered desalination projects on Egypt’s North Coast from the Egyptian government, a government source told Enterprise Climate back in September. The interested developers included Saudi Arabia’s Acwa Power, the UAE’s Amea Power, Norway’s Scatec, Japan’s Toyota Tsusho, as well as local players Hassan Allam utilities, Madkour, and Infinity Power.

REMEMBER- The plants will have a combined capacity of 250 MW, helping desalinate over 400k cubic meters of water per day. The plants are expected to require USD 270 mn of investment and will be established under 25-year build-own-operate contracts.

Egypt has more desalination projects in the pipeline: Sovereign Fund of Egypt CEO Ayman Soliman said last year Egypt intended to sign contracts to build 21 desalination plants in 2023 as part of the first phase of Egypt’s large-scale USD 3 bn desalination program.

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