The latest annual report from Egyptian state power firm EEHC details relatively modest capacity expansion for the 2013-14 financial year. But Egypt’s power plans have since moved well beyond this: Egypt’s Ministry of Electricity and Renewable Energy has put together an expansion program for a total 57GW of new capacity, including short-term additions aimed at preventing blackouts this summer (MEES, 19 June).

The Egyptian Electricity Holding Company, which accounts for all of Egypt’s installed capacity, added 1.22GW of net capacity over the year to June 2014, taking total capacity to 32.02GW. This was almost 6GW above peak recorded consumption of 26.14GW. But demand spiked well above this later in the summer, when outages of both generating capacity and grid infrastructure, coupled with transmission and distribution losses, led to frequent outages (MEES, 12 September 2014). (CONTINUED - 716 WORDS)