Schneider eyes EUR 500-600 mn contract for 10 control centers: Schneider Electric Systems is in talks with the Electricity Ministry for the contract to build 10 energy control centers, which are expected to cost EUR 500-600 mn, Managing Director Khaled Kamel was quoted as saying in Sunday’s print edition of Hapi Journal. The control centers will be located in Cairo, Alexandria, Sharm El Sheikh, Hurghada, Minya, Ismailia, and Nile Delta governorates.

The company hopes to ink the contract with the ministry before the summer, Schneider Electric Middle East and North Africa President Walid Sheta told Enterprise.

This is all part of a wider plan: The 10 centers Schneider is eyeing are part of the ministry’s plan to set up a total of 15 centers, four of which the company already snapped up at a cost of EGP 4.7 bn (c.EUR 253 mn). General Electric was awarded a contract to build a single center in Alexandria. The ministry is working on rolling out smart control centers across the country in a five-phase, 10-year strategy.

When should we expect Schneider’s four centers? The company had said last year it would complete the first four control centers — all in the Greater Cairo area — by mid-2022. Schneider now plans to deliver the four centers within the next two months, Sheta added.

Schneider will also install 8k smart ring main units (RMU) — an integrated electrical tool that helps reduce operational costs — in ten governorates as part of the project. The smart RMUs will help reduce energy losses through the national grid from a current 30% to 10%, Kamel said.

EV battery tech is also in the plans: Schneider is currently researching ways to generate and store electricity from solar energy to charge electric vehicle batteries, Sheta told us. Want to know the ins and outs of energy storage through batteries? Read our Hardhat on how it could be the solution to Egypt’s electricity oversupply problem.

Meanwhile: The company is separately looking to acquire an unnamed Egyptian digital transformation company in the near future, Kamel said, as it eyes investing more heavily in digital transformation over the next few years.

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The government has agreed to lend the country’s first green hydrogen plant electricity to help get it up and running, Al Borsa reports. Orascom Construction, Norway’s Scatec, Nassif Sawiris-backed Fertiglobe, and the Sovereign Fund of Egypt — the consortium building the 100 MW Ain Sokhna facility — requested the electricity last week to help expedite construction in time to showcase part of the project at COP27. The electricity will come from renewable sources connected to the national grid for a two-year period, and the plant will return the same amount to the grid once it starts operating. The plant is expected to be fully completed by 2024.