Biography:

Abstract:

Egypt relies on the burning of fossil fuels to satisfy about 85 percent of its electricity requirements. Crisis aside, the electricity problem is raising more questions about the long-term sustainability of electricity production in Egypt. With consumption growing at an alarming average of 7 percent per year -at 13.5 percent on 2013- experts estimate that the country's oil and gas reserves will run out within 30 to 50 years. Power shortage due to the cut of natural gas supply to the generating power stations is expected. Egypt produces 124 Terawatt hours (TWh) of electricity per year and consumes 109 TWh, according to the US Energy Information Administration. However, poor infrastructure, inept resource management and tumbling foreign reserves limit Egypt's options for dealing with the growing demand. Energy intensive industries, such as cement and steel, receive the highest level of support under a government fuel subsidies regime. Instead of reducing it, however, government has asked ordinary citizens to carry the burden. Residential use accounts for around 40 percent of electricity consumption in Egypt. Around 4 million air conditioning units have been sold in 2012, according to the electricity minister, adding that they consume about 12 percent of power station production. The rising level of electricity consumption in Egypt �catastrophic�. Solving the generation problem can take years as Ministry of Electricity and Energy (MEE) has already announced ambitious target production of an 20 percent of its electricity from renewable resources by 2020, with approximately 12 percent to come from wind sources or create additional stations to cope with the continuous growth of population and projects.Wind power generation is receiving great attention from majority of power plant developers because of its competitive technical, economic, social and friendly environmental concerns compared to conventional power sources. However, wind energy (WE) generation is ultimately limited by its intermittency and uncertainty as a source of power. This paper aims at studying the economic viability of wind project in Quseir city , in the red sea region. Using WAsP and WindPRO softwares, the technical and economical possibility of implementing a 50MW wind power plant project is demonstrated. Therefore, the research work fulfils the following: - The proper wind resource assessment (WRA) using the available wind data and considering both the terrain and topographic features around the location. - The methodology of selecting the more convenient wind turbine for a site according to IEC 61400. - The optimal micro-sitting of the wind turbines . - The calculation expected gross and net annual energy production of the wind farm.