Saudi Arabia, Egypt to complete power grid link in 2017: minister

Egypt and Saudi Arabia will complete a project aimed at linking their electricity grids within 2017, Egyptian Minister of Electricity Mohamed Shaker said Monday.

In 2013, Saudi Arabia and Egypt signed a 6 billion-riyal (£1.05 billion) agreement to link their electricity grids, a project that will allow power trading between the two countries.

The two countries have accomplished so far around 14,000 megawatts in the electricity interconnection project, which primarily aims to boost the electricity-generating capacity of both countries, the Egyptian minister added.

The project will help exchange energy between the two countries in peak hours, to a maximum of 3,000 megawatts, as well as help them export surpluses in electricity.

A month earlier, the Egyptian parliament approved on Monday the electricity interconnection loan agreement, signed in Cairo on 22 November last year with the Kuwaiti Fund for Arab Economic Development.

“The fund will provide 30 million Kuwaiti dinars in a loan to be used for implementing this landmark project, which will become a key hub in the Arab electricity grid,” said the parliamentary report on the deal issued in August.

According to the report, the two electricity grids of Egypt and Saudi Arabia will be interconnected via three stations – with the first in Egypt in the city of Badr and the other two in Saudi Arabia in the cities of Medina and Tabuk.

“These three stations will be linked via aerial lines and naval cables in the Gulf of Aqaba and will help interconnect the two electricity grids of the two countries and boost their total power-generation capacity to more than 90,000 megawatts,” said the report, adding that “they will represent the two biggest electricity grids in the Arab world.”