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Saudi Arabian utility developer ACWA Power, partly owned by the sovereign Public Investment Fund, achieved financial close for $123 million to develop the 200MW Kom Ombo solar project in Egypt.
The total investment cost is $182 million of which 68% of non-recourse to shareholder, the Riyadh Tadawul-listed utility developer said in a statement on Wednesday.
The limited recourse financing will be for a duration of two years, it added.
Financing institutions for this project include European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), OPEC Fund for International Development (the OPEC Fund), African Development Bank (AfDB), AfDB’s Sustainable Energy Fund for Africa (SEFA), Green Climate Fund (GCF), Arab Petroleum Investments Corporation (APICORP) and Arab Bank.
In an April statement ACWA had said the package comprise loans of up to $36 million from the EBRD, $14.6 million from the OPEC Fund, $14.4 million from the AfDB, $34.5 million from the GCF, $14.8 million from Arab Bank and $10 million from the SEFA under the COVID-19 IPP relief programme.
The Kom Ombo plant will be located less than 20 kilometres from Africa’s biggest solar park, the 1,465 MW Benban complex—another ACWA Power development—and is expected to be commercially operational in January 2024. Once fully functional, the new utility-scale plant will serve 130,000 households.
The Egyptian government has set a target to generate 42% of electricity from renewable energy sources by 2035.
(Writing by Brinda Darasha; editing by Seban Scaria)
