Alcazar closes USD 436 mn of European debt for its 500 MW Niat and Rasgha wind farms

Another 500 MW of Red Sea wind projects are fully financed: The Niat and Rasgha wind projects at Ras Ghareb reached financial close, with the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), the European Investment Bank (EIB), and German Investment Corporation (DEG) each providing a third of a USD 436 mn debt package (around USD 145.3 mn apiece, by our math), project developer Alcazar Energy Partners said in a statement yesterday. The two 250 MW farms cost USD 626 mn combined and are due to start commercial operation by the end of 2028.

With the money in place, the notice to proceed has gone out: Siemens Gamesa will supply the wind turbines and handle long-term maintenance, while Orascom Construction will deliver all civil and electrical works. On the other end of the wires, state grid operator Egyptian Electricity Transmission Company (EETC) will off-take the power under a 25-year power purchase agreement. Alcazar expects the farms to generate more than 2.3 TWh annually (about 6.3 GWh a day, by our math) and avoid nearly 1.1 mn tons of CO2-equivalent a year.

The lenders’ own filings fill in the detail: The EBRD’s project documents put its two loans for Niat and Rasgha, approved in July, at up to USD 80 mn each, while the EIB signed its loan in September. DEG’s share is USD 145.5 mn. The USD 200 mn package the EBRD was still weighing in June was ultimately trimmed to the amount signed.

The other side of the USD 626 mn is equity — about USD 190 mn, by our math — from Alcazar Energy Partners II, the USD 490 mn fund that wholly owns both projects, according to the EBRD’s project page. That puts the EBRD, the EIB, and DEG on both sides of the transaction: they’re lending to the farms and are also investors in the fund that owns them, along with the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), France’s Proparco, and Dutch entrepreneurial development bank FMO.

IN CONTEXT- The close comes as Alcazar works through its other Egyptian wind investment, the USD 420 mn privatization of the state-owned 580 MW Gabal El Zeit wind farm, signed in July and has yet to close its own financing. Ras Ghareb is one of a queue of DFI-backed wind financings this year: the EBRD signed USD 192 mn for Scatec’s Shadwan wind farm in August, and the IFC is weighing USD 120 mn for the Gabal El Zeit purchase. All told, Alcazar puts its two Egyptian transactions at more than USD 1 bn.

Why it matters: The build is paid for with European public money (three development banks plus an EU guarantee) and repaid out of a single 25-year promise EETC, the farms’ only buyer. That’s the template Egypt now leans on to reach its 45% renewables target by 2028, since a state balance sheet stretched by the gas import bill can’t fund that build on its own.

In other energy news…

Benban is getting a battery: The EBRD arranged up to USD 63.5 mn in financing for a 258.5 MWp solar plant (200 MW AC) paired with a 120 MWh battery energy storage system (BESS) at Aswan’s Benban Solar Park, the bank said in a statement yesterday. The project company, Nefer Benban for Renewable Energy, is a joint venture between Infinity Power and Hassan Allam Utilities (HAU) Energy. The package splits into up to USD 56 mn of the EBRD’s own funds and a USD 7.5 mn concessional tranche from the Climate Investment Funds’ Clean Technology Fund.

IN CONTEXT- The package builds on the USD 65 mn construction bridge loan the EBRD extended to HAU Energy in April, part of a broader debt package of up to USD 127 mn alongside DEG.

Why it matters: The plant is one of Egypt’s first grid-scale solar farms to add battery storage, which tackles solar’s obvious limit: it only generates by day. By our math, the battery holds about 36 minutes of the plant’s AC output, so it shifts the evening peak rather than supplying power overnight. EETC will buy the output under a 25-year power purchase agreement. The project also sits under the energy pillar of the state’s Nexus of Water, Food, and Energy (NWFE) program, which aims to retire 5 GW of inefficient fossil-fuel capacity and add 10 GW of private-sector renewables by 2028.