Clean energy investment in developing countries : Wind power in Egypt

Yet wind generates just 0.7 per cent of Egypt’s electricity supply.1 This case study: 1. describes the development of wind generation to date, within the context of the development of the energy and electricity sectors; 2. analyzes the factors supporting and constraining investment—what these have been to date and how they might develop in the future; 3. discusses the conditions that would be nece [...] According to the wind atlas, the following major areas with sufficient wind energy resources have been identified: 1. Gulf of Suez area (wind power density 400–600 W/m2; 400–500 W/m2 nearer to the city of Suez); 16 See for example 3 Tier (n.d.), REmapping the World, which states that, ―there are three major obstacles to the adoption of renewable energy: the availability, the accessibility and the [...] The issue is one of cost: long transmission lines are clearly more expensive than shorter ones; as the proportion of wind in the grid increases, more provision has to be made for controlling the quality17 of the power in the grid and higher levels of back-up power or storage are required. [...] They also depend strongly on the share of wind in the system’s generating mix: in general, costs increase as the share of wind in the electricity mix increases. [...] Capital cost estimates tend to be of the order of $500/kW with non-fuel operating costs of the order of $5/MWh and a capacity factor of 90 per cent.53 The key determinant of generating costs is the cost of gas purchased.54 With a typical efficiency of a new gas CCGT plant being of the order of 55 per cent, each unit of electricity generated requires approximately two units of gas input.