In the deserts near Aswan, Egypt the Benban Solar Park stands as one of the world’s largest renewable-energy experiments — a massive solar ecosystem that behaves less like a single power station and more like a telecommunications network. With a total installed capacity of 1.65 gigawatts (GW) and annual generation of about 3.8 terawatt-hours, Benban is big enough to change how Egypt powers its homes, industries, and future.

The idea for Benban began taking shape around 2014, when Egypt launched an ambitious plan to transform its energy mix through a national Feed-in Tariff (FiT) program. Construction accelerated between 2016 and 2018, with 41 separate solar plants being developed simultaneously by dozens of companies. The park began coming online in phases starting in 2018, and full commercial operation was achieved in 2019, marking a turning point in Egypt’s renewable-energy landscape.

Benban isn’t a single solar plant at all, but a collection of 41 facilities, each developed by different companies but connected through shared infrastructure. This structure is what makes Benban unique: dozens of developers working like nodes in a vast energy network, each feeding electricity into shared substations and Egypt’s national grid. In telecom terms, each company operates its own “tower,” but the backbone system is shared, coordinated, and standardized so the entire network functions seamlessly.

“The first time I came here, there was nothing but sand,” recalls Mostafa Abdelfatah, the project manager at Benban. “But the sunshine immediately struck me as a great opportunity to produce clean energy. Benban is now one of the largest solar parks in the world, with millions of photovoltaic panels, providing electricity to more than one million homes,” he said.

A wide range of companies helped create the Benban complex, from global renewable-energy giants to regional and local developers. Major players include Scatec, ACWA Power, EDF Renewables, Infinity Power, Hassan Allam, and ElSewedy Electric. These developers financed, built, and now operate their respective slices of Benban under Egypt’s FiT framework and long-term power purchase agreements with the national electricity utility. The FiT scheme originally offered rates of 14.34 US cents per kilowatt-hour, later adjusted to around 8.4 cents, reflecting declining solar costs and competitive tenders.

For investors in solar energy, these long-term, government-backed contracts created a rare combination in an emerging market: stable returns, predictable cash flow, and strong multilateral support from development banks. For Egypt, it meant unlocking billions in renewable-energy investment without burdening the state with upfront capital costs.

The benefits extend far beyond balance sheets. Benban provides enough clean electricity to power over one million Egyptian homes. Individual plants generate enough energy for tens of thousands of households, creating a cumulative national impact. For everyday Egyptians — particularly lower-income families vulnerable to grid instability, rising diesel costs, or seasonal electricity cuts — Benban represents a major step toward more reliable, stable, and affordable power.

The structure of Benban offers several strategic advantages. Shared infrastructure reduces construction costs and environmental footprints. If one plant requires maintenance, dozens of others continue operating, ensuring steady output. Standardized engineering requirements mean that all plants align to the same grid specifications and safety protocols, reducing risks of outages or instability. It is the same logic used in telecommunications: many operators, one harmonized network.

Consider Banban a model and a training hub

Benban has also become a critical training ground for Egypt’s next generation of solar engineers, technicians, and energy managers. Thousands of Egyptians were employed in construction and operations, and many now work across the Middle East and Africa on new solar ventures, exporting Egypt’s clean-energy expertise.

Perhaps through Benban the old Desertec idea of uniting all of Africa using solar energy, can be re-ignited.

On a national scale, Benban reduces Egypt’s dependence on imported fossil fuels and frees up natural gas for industrial use or export. Solar power provides price stability, helping insulate poorer households from global fuel market volatility. Many Egyptian homes still burn polluting bitumen to cook their food. It also advances national climate targets by avoiding millions of tons of carbon emissions over its lifetime.

How investors can get involved in Egypt’s solar future?

Even though Benban is complete, Egypt’s solar opportunity is not. Investors can participate through:

• New utility-scale tenders — Egypt continues to commission large solar plants, especially around Aswan, Kom Ombo, and the Red Sea.
• IPP (Independent Power Producer) models — Private developers can propose and build solar facilities with long-term power purchase agreements.
• Distributed solar — Schools, factories, farms, and commercial buildings in Egypt are increasingly adopting rooftop solar, often with private financing.
• Green bonds and renewable-energy funds — Egyptian and regional banks issue climate-oriented financial instruments linked to solar expansion.
• Partnerships with local companies — Firms like Infinity, ElSewedy Electric, and Hassan Allam frequently collaborate with foreign investors and technology partners.

For international investors, Egypt offers stable demand, abundant sunlight, a government keen on energy diversification, and a proven track record of delivering large-scale solar projects. For everyday Egyptians, each new solar facility strengthens the grid and makes energy access fairer and more resilient. Consider investments in Sinai that could benefit Gaza as it’s being rebuilt?

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Even oil rich countries understand the importance of solar energy. Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and now Iran in its declaration to install 550,00 rooftop solar installations, as it expands solar energy and renewable energy through the country.

In a report by the English news site in Iran Press TV, rooftop solar units in the country will expand quickly to over 100,000 in the calendar year to March 2023, and the rooftop panels will have a maximum electricity generation capacity of 5 kilowatts per hour.

Rarely would the terms “Iran” and “renewable energy” be considered as having any positive correlation. The Islamic Republic has some of the world’s largest reserves of fossil fuels and relies on their export for about half of its national revenue. Iran is also is the seventh largest carbon emitter in the world, with its population consuming energy at a rate more than four times the global average. 

Iran is a leading energy supplier to the world but in renewables it’s doing shabbily.  Renewables make up for less than one percent of a power generation capacity of 86 gigawatts (GW).

However, Iran’s leaders, particularly over the past five years, have been making considerable efforts to challenge the dominance of fossil fuels in the country’s energy mix. As part of the 2015 Paris Climate Accords, Iran pledged to reduce its greenhouse emissions by 4% by 2030 through expansion of renewable energy production and utilization.

The Iranian Energy Ministry is offering grants and 10-year loans as incentives to the applicants. The aim is to encourage poorer households to buy into the scheme in order to receive a feed-in tariff each month for the energy they generate. The energy generated will feed back into the grid and not be allocated to specific houses as one sees in off grid projects. 

The new government program for expansion of rooftop solar will increase the renewable capacity in the country by 2.75 GW, reports Press TV. We couldn’t find a press release to back up the report,

That comes as the government has announced broader plans for expansion of renewables by 10 GW until 2025.

Energy Minister Ali Akbar Mehrabian said in January that the government will allocate 30 trillion rials (over $115 million USD) to the sector in the calendar year to March 2023. 

Image above via The Tehran Times, lower image via US-Iran

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Energy Committee Head Magid Eldeen Almanzlaoy said the loans are a product of a tripartite contract between private banks, state-owned electricity companies and the Egyptian Businessmen’s Association (EBA). Interest rates will range from 4% to 8%, depending on the size of the systems installed.

The program emerged in part due to an EBA study assessing the feasibility of rooftop solar energy generation in Egypt. With an incessantly sunny climate and some of the world’s highest insolation levels, Egypt is a solar-power-generating Nirvana.  The country – which is the most populous Arab nation – is rolling out an ambitious renewable energy program for meeting surging domestic energy demand while curbing reliance on fossil fuel imports. Egypt aspires to obtain 20% of its energy from renewables by 2020.

Egypt subsidizes domestic energy and has committed to continuing to do so for at least another five years. Encouraging domestic production of home energy is a practical approach to wean the nation off increasingly expensive gas-dependent electricity. Rooftop solar units for energy and water heating are mature and affordable; the obstacles to the scheme lie beyond economics and technology.

Citizen participants who repay their loans will be able to sell excess electricity produced from their solar units back to the national grid. Simple enough, and a standard feature of most programs that encourage distributed energy production. But most Egyptians have never paid interest on a loan before.

Aisha Abdelhamid, a writer with blog CleanTechnica, voiced healthy cynicism that  the scheme will succeed. She wrote that ‘interest’ is “just another form of ‘rashwah’ in just about any intelligent Egyptian’s opinion.” She explained, “‘Rashwah’ is the Arabic word for Egypt’s corrupt system of paying for favors for common, everyday services like getting the light bulb changed on the state-owned electric pole on a street corner.”

And how does this jibe with a longstanding culture of civilian distrust of government?  It doesn’t deter Almanzlaoy’s optimism that the plan will succeed. “The initiative will be implemented during the first quarter of the current year, particularly as the legislative structure of the new tariff for renewable energy put Egypt on the map of countries producing electricity from renewable sources,” he said.

Back to Ms. Abdelhamid who writes, “’Legislative’? ‘Structure’? We don’t even have a Parliament right now!”

Egypt’s plans for residential solar power generation are definitely heating up.

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As of recently, there has been much encouragement from industry sources for the use of solar power on rooftops. Mounting photovoltaic panels on rooftops of residential and office buildings or industrial facilities can be beneficial for they can provide electricity and create a surplus that can be fed into the grid.

“In the next 12 months, we will see a constant increase of solar infrastructure. Not only standalone facilities, but to actually power our villas, our parks, our residential communities,” said Ivano Iannelli to The National. He is the chief executive of the government-owned advisory company Dubai Carbon Centre of Excellence.

However, the legislation may reach some hurdles. Other countries that receive solar energy from small-scale sources, suppliers receive a feed-in tariff from the government. This is a tactic that is under consideration in Dubai. Feed-in tariffs are usually above the market rate, making installation for the solar technology profitable.

“Feed-in tariffs are part of the different activities that are being looked upon,” he noted.

Despite the tariffs being under consideration, industry players are still interested in the appeal for Dubai’s move towards solar energy. SolarWorld, one of Germany’s biggest solar panel producers, opened a showroom in Dubai Creek where its product will be sold by local distributor PTL Solar.

Reliant on fossil fuels, solar energy is a possible alternative energy source for Dubai to take advantage of. The Emirate is already seeking to generate five percent of its electricity from the sun by 2030 and last year, the Dubai Supreme Council for Energy announced its plans for the Mohammad bin Rashad Al Maktoum Solar Park; the contract was awarded for the first plans to take place in October.

Solar energy will also divert attention away from Dubai’s power plants’ reliance on natural gases, which are imported.

The expense is especially high during the summer months when air conditioning is frequently used and the emirate must turn to costly liquefied natural gas.

This expense is then passed on to consumers with a fuel surcharge. Fortunately, solar panels are becoming cheaper as the technology advances and fierce competition controls the prices.

Thanks to the emergence of solar energy, Dubai can also reach its goal of reducing the carbon footprint of its power generation – like Abu Dhabi, which launched the Shams1 Concentrated Solar Plant (CSP) in March 2013.

Shams, impressively, at 100 megawatts, is the largest solar installation in the Middle East. Green Prophet visited Shams earlier this year and you can see pictures here. This installation will contribute to the Emirate’s plan to derive seven percent of its electricity from renewable resources by 2020.

We are rooting for them.

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Israel’s research labs such as National Solar Energy Center,  Grand Technion Energy Program (GTEP) and companies such as Zenith Solar and Arava Power Systems are developing advanced solar energy technology which is nearly cost-competitive with fossil fuels.  Israel’s solar technology has been used in places as far away as Australia and China.   Combine this with the fact that about 60 percent of Israel is a desert averaging more than 9 hours of sunshine per day and Israel’s solar energy industry should have a bright future.  But as of 2011 Israel had only installed 190 Megawatts of peak photovoltaic power generation capacity.  This is about 3 photovoltaic watts per person.  This places Israel at the top of the MENA countries, well ahead of Turkey which only has 0.1 peak photovoltaic watts installed per capita.  But outside of MENA, 19 countries exceed Israel’s photovoltaic generating capacity.  This surprising list includes such cloudy northern places as Canada with twice and Germany with 60 times Israel’s per capita photovoltaic capacity.

So what’s the problem?

Some solar power advocates claim that the reason for Israeli solar’s failure to thrive is that Israel’s government doesn’t do enough to encourage solar energy or that government bureaucracy actually discourages photovoltaic installations.  Israel’s Public Utility Authority (PUA) introduced feed-in tariffs in 2008 in an effort to encourage solar energy deployments.  Feed-in tariffs are intended to compensate for high start-up and KWh production costs so that solar can compete with legacy energy generation technologies.  Feed-in tariffs have allowed green alternative energy systems to compete with legacy technology in Israel and elsewhere.

But the tariffs introduce a level of bureaucratic complexity to solar installations.  Solar utilities can’t afford to ignore the tariffs that their competitors are benefiting from.  PUA’s scheme limits residential feed-in tariffs to 15KWp and commercial feed-in tariffs to 50KWp with a 50MW total installation limit for the first 7 years.  Residential and large scale commercial solar companies are competing for licenses which entitle them to a slice of this pie.

But now that photovoltaics have dropped as low as $1/Watt, PUE is considering  reducing feed-in tariffs by up to 34% from last year to 65 agorot per kilowatt hour.  This move is intended to save ratepayers NIS 2 billion which would otherwise become windfall profits for solar utilities.

In a Jerusalem Post article published early last month, Arava Power Company CEO Jon Cohen said that such low feed-in tariffs would cause Israel’s green energy possibilities to “slip between our fingers.”  He went on to say that  because of this policy, Eliat’s generators would continue to burn diesel during times of peak demand at a cost that exceeds the feed-in tariff.

Photo of solar energy collectors from Zenith Solar

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Dubai’s electric utilities are considering buying back power generated from solar panels on the roofs of houses and office buildings.

Last year, the city carried out its first ever study to see how much solar power is being produced outside the grid and it found that local businesses and other private owners were producing around 5 MW of electricity for their own use.

If that much is being done with no incentives, they thought, how much power could citizens deploy if there were an incentive?

(Or – could all this onsite solar generation be due to Dubai’s own Net Zero Building Codes it passed a few years ago? To incentivize architects to add solar!)

Related: Green Gas Station Meets Stringent New Dubai Building Code)

Dubai electricity consumption is growing at an average rate of 15 per cent, almost four times the global growth of 4 per cent, and by 2007, the city already had a 24 GW electricity habit. Solar prices in Dubai are similar to California at about US$10,000 (Dh36,700) for enough electricity for a typical home.

Dubai Water and Electricity Authority (Dewa) has now hired consultants; Belgium-based Tractebel to look into the feasibility of some kind of a payment method.

“They are looking at technical specifications, code of connection and commercial aspects,” said Saeed Al Tayer, the chief executive of Dewa told The National. “It’s still too early to say when it will be implemented.”

To encourage more generation from distributed energy off lots of individual solar rooftops, Dubai is considering preferential rates on bank loans, along with leaning towards the subsidy route.

The U.S. has offered rebates since 2006, with little success.

The U.S. did not see the same success as feed in tariffs when it offered rebates providing discounts of 30% (nationally) plus additional state rebates (another 50% in the state of Louisiana – to add up to 80%) cutting the upfront payments.

Other nations found that clean energy got ramped up pretty fast when the price is right. A feed in tariff, as in Spain, Germany and the United Kingdom, drove adoption rates to record levels.

Similarly, in the U.S. it was selling solar credits to utilities that quickly drove New Jersey to parity with California over a very few years, because people saw money selling Solar Renewable Energy Credits (SRECs).

There is just something people respond to on a psychological level about being paid for their production of clean powered electricity.

Solar leases, power purchase contracts, and property tax financing were begun in the U.S. 2009, and these also accelerated solar adoption in the U.S.

They made it easier to swap a monthly payment for electricity for a monthly payment towards a month of solar. (Even though previously a bank loan essentially did the same thing — that somehow that was never enough to change behaviour, maybe because of the perception that credit ratings mattered with banks.)

My two cents to Dubai, after five years immersed in renewable policy? Go with a direct payment system like New jersey’s SRECs or Europe’s FITs.

Related:

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“Sixty percent of the country happens to be desert, and 30 percent of the [desert] inhabitants happen to be Bedouin,” says Yosef Abramowitz, president of Arava Power Company in Israel. Abramowitz sees his solar energy company’s success of installing solar units in the desert as intertwined with the people who know Israel’s deserts best: the Israeli Bedouin.

He is fighting regulatory bodies on behalf of the Bedouin, to make sure they get their share of the sun. Attractive feed-in tariffs in Israel, with state guarantees on solar energy investments for new solar power plants, have created a small windfall of opportunities for local installers, as well as local and foreign investors. Arava seeks to lease Bedouin land to install solar power plants, with financial backing from companies like Siemens.

Step-by-step progress is being made: In the summer, the Southern Regional Planning and Building Committee of the Israeli Ministry of the Interior approved plans for a photovoltaic (PV) solar installation next to the Israeli Bedouin community of Tarabin. This $30 million joint project between the Tarabin tribe and Arava would be the first to be approved on Bedouin land.

Pushing through red tape

Arava Power recently installed a solar power plant of almost five megawatts at Kibbutz Ketura. A series of additional solar installations in the same area are planned as the company joins other industrious solar power plant entrepreneurs.

But getting the rubber stamp from the last regulatory body to go ahead with building the solar field at Tarabin is not proving easy. And in the meantime, feed-in tariffs, which cap at 300 megawatts, are getting used up.

Arava Power is appealing to the government to provide special caps to the Bedouin, a once entirely nomadic people now in transition. Abramowitz says Arava is ready to invest $3 billion in developing solar fields if this happens.

“Billions and billions of dollars will be invested in solar installations in the south of the country, and we have a moral obligation to ensure that the solar benefits of the state of Israel will be shared by all the citizens of the desert,” says Abramowitz, pointing out that allowing the Bedouin to derive a guaranteed income from an Arava-built plant would ease conditions caused by high unemployment.

The idea started with Lucy Michaels, a PhD student at the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies. She suggested that the solar energy business in Israel also benefit the Bedouin people, who tend to be socially, culturally, politically and economically marginalized from the Israeli majority.

“We didn’t start with a business model,” Abramowitz tells ISRAEL21c. “We started with a mission. We strove to maintain our mission focus. In the early years we expanded that mission to include economic justice.”

Tea, kisses and darned socks

However, complicated issues have emerged about the status of Bedouin on land that they claim without paperwork or formal deeds. According to Abramowitz, involving Bedouins in the solar industry can be a catalyst for resolving these land ownership claims, which is a government priority.

A Bedouin staff currently manages the planning stages for solar energy leasing agreements with Arava, signed at first over tea, handshakes and kisses — the Bedouin way. Every week when Abramowitz goes to visit the Bedouins he has to make sure his socks are clean with no holes, as it’s customary to remove your shoes while entering the host’s tent. “We choose families and tribes very carefully, and we are dealing with honorable people, people with influence,” he says. “A Bedouin word is their word.”

The first of five anticipated deals, the Tarabin project would be an eight-megawatt, 37-acre installation. The eventual full 30 megawatts from additional projects would go to the national grid, and in theory would be quickly used by the Bedouin people of Tarabin. Once a license is granted by the Public Utilities Authority, the first plant could be up and running in six months.

Community leader Haj Mousa Tarabin said: “I am glad there are people who are concerned and are helping the Bedouin improve their lifestyle on the economic level as well as with creating various sources of income.”

I wrote this story for ISRAEL21c – www.israel21c.org and it is reprinted here with permission.

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