High-level government sources revealed to Daily News Egypt the details of a solar panel production project in Egypt with a capacity of 1 GW annually.
The sources pointed out that the project will be implemented in two areas in Aswan and Zafarana. A decision will be issued to allocate the necessary land within a few days in order to begin the manufacturing stages. A land plot has been allocated from the Ministry of Public Enterprises in Edfu, Aswan for the project.
The sources attributed the selection of the two areas to their proximity to the ports of Safaga and Ain Sukhna. The project will be implemented in five stages: mining Egyptian quartz, extracting metallic silicone from the quartz, then converting it to polysilicon, followed by shaping moulds and slides, creating the power cells, and then finally putting it all together to manufacture a panel.
The sources said that these Egyptian made panels will be available in the Egyptian market, and the surplus will be exported to Arab and African markets.
The sources added that the project will not be executed by the Chinese GCL but by another Chinese company that has been nominated and approved. The contract will be signed during the first half of this year and financed by Chinese banks.
The source said that the Ministry of Planning and the Ministerial Economic Committee will receive the details of the financing offer to make a decision.
The sources pointed out that the studies carried out by the German Fraunhofer Society in cooperation with an Egyptian office overseeing the production project proved their feasibility, but for capacities of up to 1 GW, not 5 GW as planned earlier.
President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi issued decision No. 36 of 2017, approving the letter of the Kuwait Fund for Arab Economic Development to Egypt, represented by the Ministry of International Cooperation, regarding technical aid worth KD 200,000 ($658,206) to finance the necessary consultancy services to prepare a technical and economic feasibility study for the two stations’ construction projects, one for a solar power plant and the other for solar panel production.
