Hani El Nokraschy

Biography:

Date and place of birth: 28 June 1935 in Cairo, Egypt

Education: 1968 Technical University Darmstadt/Germany, PhD Thesis
1963 Technical University Darmstadt/Germany.
1958 Faculty of Engineering Cairo University/Egypt.
Since 2005: Managing director and owner partner of "Egyptian Solar Research Center" (SOLAREC). Web Site: www.solarec-egypt.com
Since 2003: Owner and CEO of NOKRASCHY ENGINEERING GmbH in Holm (Hamburg), Germany.

Membership in Study/Work teams:
2007: Member of the Executive Committee for MENAREC 4 in Damascus, 21-24 June 2007
2007: Consulting member to the German Expert Team for renewable energies in the frame of the German Egyptian year of science and technology
2008: Member of the advisory board for the Bi-Cultural Master?s Course in Renewable Energies in joint cooperation Cairo-Kassel Universities. Also lecturer and examiner to the students
2006-2007: Member of AQUA-CSP study team. "Seawater Desalination with Concentrating Solar Power"
2006: Creator and administrator of the web site "www.menarec.org" which gathers the conference series "Middle-East North-Africa Renewable Energy Conference"
2004-2005: Member of the study teams MED-CSP and TRANS-CSP, Renewable Energy potential and electricity demand around the Mediterranean and electricity transmission to Europe.

Membership in organisations: Since Sept. 2014: Member of the advisory board to the president of Egypt, responsible for energy sector.
2009 till Sept. 2014: Co-founder and Member of the supervisory board of DESERTEC Foundation
Since 2003:e5 European Business Council for Sustainable Energy.
Since 2002: TREC, Trans-Mediterranean Renewable Energy Co-operation, a network of scientist devoted to climate protection and renewable energy applications.
Since 1999: Association of Egyptian Businessmen in Germany.


Abstract:

Egypt's energy future

Egypt was severely struck in the few past years by electricity shortage due to shortage of fuel to fire the existing conventional power stations; mainly natural gas and oil.
In view of the expected shortage of fossil fuels throughout the world in the coming decades, it will not be wise to shift from one type of fossil fuel to another. For example shifting to coal or even to nuclear energy will just postponed the shortage problem and more over cause extra costs to shift again to a sustainable system of electricity supply.
Especially in Egypt, where the new constitution asks for sustainability in diverse fields and calls for the optimum use of renewable energies in Para. (32) it is in fact an obligation to shift the electricity supply system to renewables.
The argumentation that the renewable energies are more expensive than conventional ones is not true, when considering that a concentrating solar power station (CSP) with heat storage enabling a 24 hour operation around the year will bring the value of its investments in 7-8 years of saved fuel costs.
In nearly all desert regions and especially in Egypt, the conditions to build solar power stations with concentrating the available sunrays are very favourable. Egypt has the advantage that sunny deserts are just beside the Nile valley where the population is concentrated.
These power stations concentrate the direct sunrays (this is possible only for direct sunrays) and bundles them on a focus, where the temperature rises to several hundred degrees centigrade. This heat is then stored in a storage medium, generally a mixture of molten nitrate salts, to be used any time and on demand.
The stored heated molten salts are passed through a heat exchanger to give there heat to water and evaporates it generating high pressure and high temperature steam. The heat exchanger is thus replacing a conventional boiler in a conventional power station. This process can be supported by integrating photovoltaic (PV) panels in the power station to enable larger storage of heat at reduced costs.
A plan to gradually replace existing fossil fired power stations in Egypt with combined CSP and PV power stations would result in more than 80% renewable share in the electricity mix in 2050.
It is thus the most cost effective plan to ensure electricity supply for the future, because it is not a bridging technology to face an actual situation and then change the system again in a few years. The disaster happening in Germany these days to get rid of nuclear power stations shut down till 2022, because they were a "bridging technology", is the best example to learn: not to go "Bridging" but better go "Sustainable".