With three months left in the year, Egypt’s 2026 renewables plan rests on three solar plants — one is confirmed as fully running. The 2026 goal is to reach 11.2 GW of total installed renewable energy capacity and 1.2 GWh of total battery storage capacity. As of July, installed renewable capacity stood at 9.5 GW, with 500 MWh of battery storage, Electricity Minister Mahmoud Esmat said in a Cabinet briefing. That leaves 1.7 GW of solar and 720 MWh of storage to be added by December.

Three projects were on the docket to connect this year. A June grid review chaired by Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly listed the three as Scatec’s Obelisk phase two , Amea Power’s Abydos 2, and Infinity Power and Hassan Allam’s Nefer Benban. Combined, they should add 1.8 GW of solar and exactly 720 MWh of storage, slightly surpassing the year’s capacity target and matching the storage target.

The projects

Obelisk phase two was connected in August, completing one of the three projects. Phase one of Obelisk has been running since 23 February (with 561 MW of solar and 200 MWh of storage), while phase two reached commercial operations on 12 August, according to Scatec, adding 564 MW. Phase two completed the 1.1 GW plant and its 100 MW / 200 MWh battery.

Abydos 2 is the largest of the three: Amea had targeted beginning commercial operations in June for the 1 GW plant and its 600 MWh battery. By mid-June, the substation was energized and work to connect the plant to the national grid was underway, according to an Electricity Ministry statement. In a 13 July post, Amea announced the battery and 500 kV substation as commissioned, with phased power dispatch underway to the grid of the Egyptian Electricity Transmission Company (EETC). Trial operations began in early September, with commercial operations targeted for end-September; there have been no further announcements about that timeline since then. The plant sells to EETC at USD 0.028/kWh under a 25-year power purchase agreement.

Nefer Benban is the smallest. The 200 MW plant and its 120 MWh battery were due to start commercial operations in 3Q 2026, with a bridge loan from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development in April set to fund construction. Its sister project, the 1 GW Nefer Minya with 600 MWh of storage due 30 September 2027, received a golden license from the Cabinet in August, according to a statement. At Benban, a mid-August update from Hassan Allam shows work still underway. There is no public confirmation yet that the plant reached commercial operations by the end of 3Q 2026 on 30 September.

Abydos 2 and Nefer Benban started out on earlier schedules. The Cabinet’s July 2024 approval of Amea’s additional projects, including the 1 GW plant, slated them for before summer 2025, according to a report from the Cabinet’s Information and Decision Support Center (IDSC) (pdf). In June 2025, the Cabinet moved Abydos 2’s commercial operation date to June 2026 and approved building it as a single phase. The Nefer agreements approved in November 2024 called for 300 MW at Benban and 900 MW at Wahat, both with trial operations in 2025. The final agreements a year later cut Benban to 200 MW for 3Q 2026 and moved the larger plant to Minya at 1 GW for 3Q 2027.

Standalone storage comes later. Amea signed construction contracts in June for the 1 GWh Nefertiti and 500 MWh Horus battery projects, both due on the grid by end-2027. The national storage target for 2028 is 14.3 GWh.

Energy plans

The long-term goal: The government is aiming to achieve 45% renewable energy generation by 2028, and 2026’s goal is the smallest increment. The capacity timeline we reported in August expects 5.6 GW to be added in 2027 and almost 11 GW to be added in 2028.

The goals for 2026 were adjusted throughout the year. In February, the plan was to add about 3 GW of new solar for 2026 and 600 MWh of storage ahead of the summer peak, according to a presidency statement. In early March, the presidency cut that to 2.5 GW of renewables over the same window. On 8 July, Esmat set this year’s grid additions at 2.2 GW of renewables and 1.3 GWh of storage. The three figures cover different goals and timelines; the February statement only referred to adding solar energy before the summer, while the March statement had the same timeline but referenced renewable energy (not just solar), and the June statement referred to renewable energy added over the entire year.

Energy research group Ember expects Egypt to add about 2 GW of solar this year, up 176% from 2025 and second in Africa only to South Africa, according to a summary from the IDSC. The forecast covers all of 2026 and includes rooftop and other distributed systems, which official data often misses, it reads. That gap shows up across the continent. Ember puts Africa’s 2025 additions at about 12 GW, against 6.2 GW from the International Energy Agency and 4.6 GW from the International Renewable Energy Agency.

OUR TAKE- On the ministry’s own numbers, Egypt needs all three plants online to hit 11.2 GW by December. Obelisk 2 and a fully running Abydos 2 get it to within about 136 MW. The rest falls to Nefer Benban, whose 3Q 2026 date has passed with no public word on commercial operations.

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