You wake up in the small hours, the air is thick, and the fan has stopped. Or you are halfway through an online class, a meeting, or a study session, and the screen goes black. That was the soundtrack of last summer for many homes across Egypt, as scheduled power cuts moved from rumour to routine.
The pattern had a cause. In the summer of 2024, and again in 2025, a fierce heatwave hit Egypt, putting a toll on electricity. The government in June 2024 resorted to three-hour power cuts while it scrambled for extra fuel. This is called “load-shedding”, a scheduled switch-off of electricity to save fuel.
To plug the gap of fuel shortage, Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly stated in June 2024 that Egypt needed USD 1.18 billion worth of fuel (EGP 56.6 billion). Officials said the cuts would stop in July 2024 once extra gas shipments arrived. The message was simple: when gas is tight, lights go off or the fuel bill jumps.
Why solar is the practical answer
Egypt still makes most of its electricity from natural gas. When local gas falls short, the country buys Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) from abroad. Egypt is negotiating LNG supplies with Qatar, Algeria, and Saudi Arabia, and has signed deals with Shell and Total Energies for cargoes in early 2025. In 2025, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) reported that Egypt is buying more LNG and chartering three extra FSRUs (floating terminals that turn LNG back into gas) to cover demand. The Cabinet also said Egypt would import LNG from July 2025 to June 2026 to get through the next summer. These steps keep the grid running, but they are expensive compared with building more local solar.
The strategic answer is to raise the share of clean power. In 2023, the government revealed its plans for renewables to supply 42 percent of Egypt’s electricity by 2030. Today, renewables supply about 11.5 percent of Egypt’s electricity, as per the latest government figure reiterated publicly at COP27 in late 2024, meaning the country would need to roughly quadruple the share of clean power in the mix by 2030 to meet its goal.
In late 2024, Madbouly called for global finance to upgrade the grid. Hitting the 42 percent target means adding big solar and wind plants and also connecting smaller systems on rooftops, schools, and businesses.
By May 2025, Egypt had about 7.7 gigawatts (GW) of renewables (solar, wind, and hydro combined). A year earlier, the country had roughly 7.4 GW; 4.6 GW of wind and solar, plus 2.8 GW of hydropower. In plain terms: total clean capacity grew year-on-year, even after the big wave of solar construction at Benban earlier in the decade. The Benban Solar Park near Aswan remains the anchor of Egypt’s solar fleet, together producing about 1.5–1.65 GW for the national grid.
As for newer projects, on 15 June 2025, Egypt secured financing for a 1-GW solar plant with Scatec, the largest solar developer in Egypt. Together, they signed a USD 600 million (EGP 28.8 billion) investment and a power-purchase agreement for 900 MW of wind worth USD 1 billion (EGP 48 billion).
Smaller systems matter as well. Homes, shops, and campuses can connect under net metering, which means you use your solar power first and send any extra to the grid for credits on your bill. They are most effective for users with significant daytime consumption and in tariff bands where daytime rates are higher. The regulator’s current tariff table, in force since 1 September 2024, shows what you pay per kilowatt-hour on each band, so heavy daytime users (workshops, clinics, schools) can see their likely payback more clearly.
Why Egypt’s sun gives solar an edge
Egypt is also a naturally sunny place to tune more to this natural resource. National and World Bank-backed tools show strong solar resources: around 3,000 hours of sunshine a year in many areas, and high solar radiation from the Nile Valley to Upper Egypt. More sun hours and stronger radiation mean each panel can generate more electricity.
Yet, there is still a bottleneck to solve: the grid. Think of the grid as the “roads and bridges” of electricity: the big pylons (high-voltage lines) and substations that carry power from where it is made (Benban in Upper Egypt, wind in the Gulf of Suez) to where it is used (Cairo, the Delta, industrial zones). Currently, those “roads” are busy, and some stretches are too narrow for the extra traffic from new solar and wind plants. That is why even with lots of sunshine and ready investors, projects can be delayed until there is space on the lines.
First, less than 12 percent of Egypt’s nearly 60 GW of installed capacity was renewable as of mid-2024, meaning most power still came from gas and older plants. Second, the national renewables total did rise 0.3 GW year-on-year, from mid-2024 Mid 2025; however, to reach the desired 42 percent by 2030, a lot more new projects must be plugged in quicker than the infrastructure can currently cater.
Officials say they are fast-tracking clean-energy connections through the Under Egypt’s Nexus for Water, Food and Energy (NWFE) platform so priority projects can feed power into the network before peak summer demand.
To make that possible, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development’s (EBRD) is in parallel financing a grid-reinforcement project. A new 500 kV substation in Cairo and about 200 km of new 500 kV lines, which will move solar from Upper Egypt, where it’s sunny, and wind from the coastal area into areas of major loads.
The bank’s documents describe the substation as “crucial for the stability of the network” and say the upgrade is directly linked to closing the Shoubra El-Kheima gas plant without risking supply. In simple terms; more high-voltage lines in addition to bigger substations result in more room for solar and wind to flow, fewer bottlenecks, and less need for emergency fuel in hot months. Without these wires and substations, new solar fields cannot deliver their power to homes or shops, even if the panels are already in the desert.
Put simply, last year’s blackouts showed the cost of relying on gas alone. This year’s plan is to buy time with imported fuel while adding more solar and wind, large and small, and strengthening the grid that carries them.
Reaching the planned 42 percent by 2030 now depends on keeping that build on schedule and plugging each project into a grid that is ready for it.
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