Egypt’s President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi says the country needs to increase its electricity generating capacity by 12GW over five years. His announcement follows a meltdown on Egypt’s power grid, which caused six-hour blackouts in major cities on 4 September. Transformer station fires and other equipment failures contributed to an estimated 9GW of generating capacity being taken offline.
State generator Egyptian Electric Holding Company (EEHC) estimates Egypt’s total generating capacity at 30.8GW. However, with transmission and distribution losses taking up 10% of electricity supplied to a typical grid, peak summer demand has at times exceeded 27.6GW, putting excess strain on aging generating and transmission systems and triggering frequent outages. (CONTINUED - 591 WORDS)
