Dubai-based Amea Power and Japan’s Kyuden International wrapped financing on a USD 700 mn solar and battery storage project in Aswan, Amea said in a statement. The facility, known as Abydos II, will be the largest single-site renewable energy facility in Africa when it comes online.

The International Finance Corporation led a USD 570 mn debt package, with co-financing from a who’s-who of development finance institutions, including Italy’s CDP, Dutch development bank FMO, Germany’s DEG, British International Investment (which wrote a USD 37 mn ticket, it said in a separate statement), the OPEC Fund, and Europe Arab Bank.

By the numbers: The 1 GW solar plant, paired with 600 MWh of battery storage, should come online by June 2026. Amea Power holds 60% of the project, while Kyuden has 40%. It’s Kyuden’s first investment in Egypt. Construction work is already underway; Amea and Kyuden have a 25-year offtake agreement with the Egyptian Electricity Transmission Company.

This one is special: The Amea-Kyuden plant is being paired with what will become Africa’s largest battery energy storage system (or “BESS,” in industry-speak). The battery system will allow the massive solar park to supply renewable energy to the national grid during peak evening hours when load-shedding risks are highest.

Amea is big here: The developer is quickly becoming one of the largest private power players in the nation. When the Aswan facility comes into service, the company’s Egypt portfolio will top 2.5 GW of wind and solar, plus 2.4 GWh of storage. It commissioned a 500 MW solar plant a year ago this month and has a 500 MW wind farm in the construction phase.

The utility-scale battery storage is clutch

Why this matters: Utility-scale battery storage is among the more important hedges against the return of rolling blackouts that plagued us in 2023 (and, to a lesser extent, 2024). The other big things for officials to address are the capacity and quality of the transmission grid itself. Integrated battery storage systems, like the 600 MWh of storage Amea has here, provide baseload-style renewable power. The more we have of that, the less reliant we’ll be on unpredictable Israeli gas imports and declining domestic production from the Zohr field.

Egypt aims to hit 42% renewables in its energy mix by 2030 as it seeks to position itself as the premier renewable energy hub in the eastern Mediterranean.

(** Tap or click the headline above to read this story with all of the links to our background as well as external sources.)

Tags: