OST Energy (OST) is working with a number of major international development finance institutions and IPPs to provide lender’s engineering and due diligence services to Egypt’s 2-GW Ben Ban solar PV development site in Aswan. OST has signed several high-profile contracts with investors, major IPPs. and lenders.
The Egyptian government has set an ambitious target to bring online 2.3 GW of small and utility-scale solar by 2017, attracting the attention of the international investment community. In order to incentivize development and meet these targets, a Feed-in Tariff (FiT) for solar projects up to 50 MW has been introduced and a number of development areas have been assigned for allocation to domestic and international IPPs. The Ben Ban development area in the governorate of Aswan is the largest of these with a 37 sq km site consisting of 36 plots for projects of between 20 and 50 MW.
Once fully occupied and operational, the site will have a capacity of nearly 2 GW, providing the vast majority of solar power required to meet Egyptian target. Once operational it will constitute one of the largest PV installations in the world. However, with installation due to commence in mid-2016 and scheduled for completion at the end of 2017, a rapid development timeline has been set for the Ben Ban projects.
The timeline has the investment community calling for the technical and commercial expertise of independent advisors and engineers as they make crucial early decisions with a bearing on the financial success of these projects. OST Energy has so far been appointed by lenders including EBRD, Proparco and OPIC, alongside a number of IPPs to provide technical advisory and due diligence services on a total of 15 projects, split between the Ben Ban site and other locations across Egypt.
These services range from lender’s technical advisory and owner’s engineering services to environmental and social advisory support, and OST will be engaged throughout the construction phases and early operations of a number of sites until 2017 and beyond.