Univers recognised in the Gartner® Hype Cycle™ for Digital Grid, 2026 and Power and Utility Industry IT, 2026.  Learn more →

Login
Contact Us

Powering Egypt’s First Utility-Scale Hybrid Renewable Project

Learn how Univers helped a leading Norwegian renewable energy IPP bring 1.1 GW of solar and 100MW/200MWh of battery storage online near Luxor — passing grid-connection in a single day, ten days ahead of schedule.

Get a Free Hybrid Solar+BESS Assessment

1.1 GW

Solar capacity

200 MWh

BESS capacity

10 days

Ahead of grid-connection schedule

1st

Utility-scale hybrid in Egypt

Project Overview

Egypt’s energy transition has accelerated rapidly — and with it, the regulatory and technical bar for utility-scale renewables. Hybrid solar-plus-storage assets at gigawatt scale bring complexity that grid-only or storage-only projects don’t face: two different OEM stacks, two different control philosophies, and one grid code that treats the asset as a single, dispatchable entity.

Located near Luxor, the project is the first large utility-scale hybrid renewable project in Egypt — combining 1.1 GW of Sungrow solar with 100MW/200MWh of Envision Energy battery storage on a single site. The client needed a control and monitoring platform that could unify both OEM stacks, meet the Egyptian Grid Code on a compressed timeline, and stay future-ready as the regulator continues to refine utility-scale BESS requirements.

Univers was selected to deliver the full intelligence layer: Hybrid Power Plant Controller, Hybrid SCADA, dedicated PV and BESS SCADA, and the EMS that sits across them.

Key Challenges

The hardware itself wasn’t the problem. Making two different OEM stacks behave as one grid-compliant hybrid asset — on an accelerated schedule, against still-evolving regulations — was.

Multi-OEM integration

The Sungrow solar plant and the Envision Energy storage system arrived with disparate control architectures and communication protocols. The control layer needed to harmonise both into a single dispatchable hybrid asset — without compromising the performance characteristics of either system.

Accelerated grid-code compliance

Egypt’s grid-connection test schedule was pulled forward by ten days late in the commissioning cycle. The platform — and the team behind it — had to absorb that compression and still meet every grid-code requirement on the first attempt.

Complex hybrid dispatch logic

Operating a hybrid solar-plus-storage asset commercially means coordinating grid setpoints with weather and price forecasts, available solar output, and battery state-of-charge — all in real time. The control logic had to synchronise grid signals with a third-party forecasting service and respect multi-asset constraints simultaneously.

Future-ready for an evolving grid code

As the first utility-scale BESS project of its kind in Egypt, the asset has been commissioned against a grid code that is still being refined. The platform needed to be flexible enough to absorb new regulatory requirements as they emerge — without re-engineering the control stack.

Univers' Solution

Univers deployed a unified hybrid control and monitoring stack across the site, sitting above both OEM systems and presenting the asset to the grid as a single, intelligent entity.

Hybrid Power Plant Controller (HPPC)

The HPPC coordinates active and reactive power across solar and storage simultaneously — managing grid-code response (frequency, voltage, ramp-rate) and dispatch decisions against live setpoints. It handles the cross-OEM orchestration that lets Sungrow solar and Envision storage operate as one hybrid plant rather than two co-located ones.

Hybrid SCADA and dedicated PV / BESS SCADA

The Hybrid SCADA layer gives operators a single pane of glass across the full asset, while the dedicated PV and BESS SCADA layers preserve OEM-level visibility down to the inverter and battery rack. Real-time monitoring, alarm management, and automated regulator reporting all run through the same platform.

EMS with third-party forecasting integration

The EMS layer integrates third-party weather and price forecasting directly into dispatch logic — letting Scatec maximise revenue across the hybrid asset rather than optimising solar and storage in isolation.

Book a free 30 minute Hybrid Solar+BESS assessment

Managing solar projects?

Outcomes

Phase 1 is in stable commercial operation. Phase 2 is in progress. The headline outcome from the commissioning cycle was a clean grid-connection result under an accelerated timeline.

Grid-connection test passed in a single day — 10 days ahead of schedule

Despite the testing window being compressed by ten days, the asset passed Egyptian grid-connection testing on the first day of the test cycle. Every grid-code requirement met on the first attempt.

Unified hybrid dispatch in stable operation

Phase 1 is running stably under HPPC control — solar and storage coordinated as a single hybrid plant, with third-party forecasting feeding dispatch decisions in real time.

A reference deployment for hybrid renewables in Egypt

The project is now established as a benchmark for utility-scale hybrid projects in Egypt and the wider region — proof that gigawatt-scale, multi-OEM hybrid assets can be commissioned on time, grid compliant, and commercially active.

Hybrid renewables are where the next wave of utility-scale capacity is going — and the integration challenge sits at the centre of every one of those projects. The IPP’s Egypt deployment shows that with a hardware-agnostic control layer and disciplined commissioning, multi-OEM hybrid assets can be brought online faster than the schedule asks for, fully grid compliant, and ready for whatever the regulator releases next.

Scatec chose Univers for a proven hybrid track record, hardware-agnostic integration, deep grid commissioning expertise, a scalable optimisation platform, and trading-ready capabilities. This project is now part of the reference set we’ll be building on across the region.