The picture shows the official signing ceremony with Gaber El Dessouki CEO of the Egyptian Electricity Holding Company and Frank Grunert, head of grid control at Siemens in the front. Courtesy Siemens.
Siemens has been awarded a contract to upgrade Egypt’s second largest city’s distribution management system, establish advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) and supply 300,000 smart meters.
The energy giant will supply two advanced distribution management systems (ADMS) for the Alexandria Supervisory Control Center and the West Alexandria Distribution Control Center.
In addition, Siemens will supply 300,000 smart meters, including the necessary hardware and software to establish an AMI.
The implementation of the advanced software solutions for distribution grids and the rollout of hundreds of thousands of intelligent field devices is hoped to help Alexandria Electricity Distribution Company (AEDC) increase operational and network efficiency, reduce network loads and losses and take efficient countermeasures before critical situations arise.
“With the rollout of hundreds of thousands of intelligent field devices and advanced software applications, we will help the operators to efficiently manage their networks and proactively guide them before and during critical situations,” stated Mostafa El-Bagoury, Siemens Egypt CEO.
Sabine Erlinghagen, CEO of Grid Software at Siemens, added: “Our software helps informed decision-making and operational optimisation to effectively reduce the cost of the distribution grid. By visualising the processes of the distribution grid at all times, our customers are able to control a wide range of grid assets and take action to prevent critical situations before they happen.”
According to Siemens, between 2015 and 2021, around 28.5GW of generation capacity was added to the Egyptian power grid, enabling the country to become a power surplus nation.
The development of the power grid needs to keep pace with the installation of new power generation assets. For the distribution grid, it is important to increase efficiency of the network and to reduce power losses.
Siemens was awarded the contract to upgrade AEDC’s distribution management system as a result of Lot 1 of a loan funded by the Japanese International Cooperation Agency (JICA), with a value of about €50 million ($50.3 million).
As a subsidiary of the state-owned utility Egyptian Electricity Holding Company (EEHC), AEDC is responsible for the distribution network of Alexandria Governorate, the second most populated governorate in Egypt.
During the upcoming 30 months, Siemens will be implementing an ADMS control centre for the West Alexandria region and a control centre to supervise all distribution control centres in Alexandria.
Following the partnership agreement signed with ESRI in July 2022, Siemens will also be delivering ESRI’s Geographical Information System (GIS) within the scope of the project.
