The Electricity Transmission Company (EETC) received six land allocation requests from companies that qualified for the New and Renewable Energy Authority’s (NREA) feed-in tariff project to construct solar power plant stations, Daily News Egypt. The companies have applied for land in the Benban area of Aswan to be allocated.

The NREA estimates project investments at $1.5m per photovoltaic MW and $1.3m per 1MW of wind power.

The Ministry of Electricity is attempting to increase the productive capacity of new and renewable energy plants by attracting investment by issuing a call for tender or feed-in tariff projects, according to Lamya Youssef, EETC’s General Manager for renewable projects.

The government announced a feed-in tariff on renewable energy projects in September 2014 with 180 companies applying. To date, 136 companies and alliance have qualified to establish solar and wind power plants, adding a capacity factor of 4,300 MW to Egypt’s electrical grid.

In related news, PV Insider reported that the Egyptian government had recently restructured its Kom Ombo solar development program, nearly three years after launching the pre-qualification process. Egypt has a target of 2.3 GW of solar capacity by 2017 and the Kom Ombo scheme was originally planned as 10 grid-connected PV plants, each with a capacity of 20 MW, to be located in Aswan in the south of the country.