Egypt plans to reissue a tender for the contract to build a pumped-hydropower storage plant in Mount Ataka, according to a local media report.

The project is being rendered following a Chinese contractor’s failure to secure funding for the project.

MEED reported in 2015 that China’s Sinohydro had signed a memorandum of understanding with Egypt’s Electricity & Energy Ministry to develop a 2,100MW dam storage project.

Three years later, Egypt Electricity Holding Company and Sinohydro signed a contract to develop a 2,400MW pumped-storage hydro project in the Suez area instead.

At the time, Egypt’s Electricity Minister, Mohamed Shaker, said that the Chinese company had signed contracts to develop the project at Jabal Ataqa under a 100% concession financing agreement.

The project was to be the first pumped-hydro storage project in Egypt, and construction work was due to start in June that year.

Egypt is now understood to be planning to offer the project to Indian, Chinese or European companies, according to the report.

In October 2023, China Energy is also understood to have signed a contract to prepare a technical and financial feasibility study for a pumped-storage hydropower plant in Egypt.

Hydroelectric power has played an important role in Egypt’s electricity mix. The Aswan high dam, built in the 1960s, can generate up to 2,100MW of electricity, while two hydroelectric plants on the old Aswan dam, downstream from the high dam, provide a further 550MW.

The other two hydroelectric plants are at Esna (86MW) and Naga Hammadi (64MW).

In 2018, Egypt commissioned a 32MW hydropower plant on the Nile river basin in Assiut.