Egypt Electricity Tariff 2026: The Full Rates, and What Commercial Solar Actually Saves

Egyptian electricity bills have been repriced twice since April. If you run a household, the notice arrived in August 2026. If you run a shop, a workshop or a factory, yours arrived in April. Either way, the direction of travel is the same, and it has been the same since 2014: up, in steps, on a published government schedule that gets revisited roughly once a year.

This article does two things. First, it lays out the actual tariff numbers, residential and commercial, in EGP per kilowatt-hour, with the dates they took effect, because most of what circulates online is either out of date or mixes schedules from different years. Second, it works through what those numbers mean for a business considering rooftop solar: what a system costs in Egypt in 2026, what it saves at current tariffs, what the net metering rules allow, and why every further tariff rise makes the arithmetic better.

The short version for anyone deciding whether to keep reading: at the tariffs now in force, a well-built commercial rooftop system in Egypt typically returns its cost in six to nine years on today's prices alone, and materially faster once you account for the tariff increases the government has already told everyone are coming.

The Residential Tariff Schedule, as of August 2026

Egypt prices household electricity in seven consumption brackets, and the whole schedule was raised by an average of 12% at the start of August 2026, announced by the Ministry of Electricity and Renewable Energy on 31 July. The first bracket was left untouched, deliberately, to protect the lowest-consuming households.

As of August 2026, the residential schedule reads as follows. The first bracket, up to 50 kWh per month, stays at 0.68 EGP per kWh. The second, 51 to 100 kWh, rose from 0.78 to 0.87 EGP. The third, 101 to 200 kWh, rose from 0.95 to 1.06 EGP. The fourth, 201 to 350 kWh, went from 1.55 to 1.74 EGP. The fifth, 351 to 650 kWh, went from 1.95 to 2.18 EGP. The sixth, 651 to 1,000 kWh, went from 2.10 to 2.35 EGP. The top bracket, above 1,000 kWh per month, rose from 2.58 to 2.89 EGP per kWh.

Note what the top of that schedule is doing. The seventh bracket had already been raised about 16% in the April 2026 adjustment, from 2.23 to 2.58 EGP, before the August round took it to 2.89. A household in the top bracket has watched its marginal rate rise roughly 30% inside five months, and 75% since mid-2024, when that bracket stood at 1.65 EGP. The brackets that heavy consumers actually pay are being moved toward cost recovery much faster than the headline "12% average" suggests.

One structural point worth knowing: the state still contributes to the bill of every household below the top of the schedule. The Electricity Ministry's August 2026 statement put its remaining contribution at around 103 EGP per month for a household using 50 kWh, rising to around 500 EGP per month at 400 kWh. Even after a decade of increases, most residential users remain below full cost recovery.

The Commercial Schedule, and Why Its Date Is Different

Commercial premises are on a separate schedule, and it moved on a different date. Commercial tariffs were raised by roughly 20% in April 2026, four months before the residential adjustment, so if you are comparing your shop's bill with your home bill, you are looking at two different revision cycles. That distinction matters when you read any tariff table online: always check which schedule and which effective date it describes.

As reported in July 2026, the commercial schedule stands at 1.62 EGP per kWh for consumption up to 100 kWh per month, 2.16 EGP up to 250 kWh, 2.64 EGP up to 600 kWh, 2.74 EGP up to 1,000 kWh, and 2.79 EGP per kWh above 1,000 kWh. There is also a 20% surcharge applied to restaurants and cafes that operate past official closing hours, which pushes the effective marginal rate for late-trading food outlets past 3.3 EGP per kWh.

Any commercial operation of real size lives in the top bracket, paying 2.74 to 2.79 EGP for nearly all of its consumption. That number, not the headline residential rates, is the one that drives the solar business case in this article.

Industry is different again. Medium-voltage industrial consumers are billed under their own tariff structure with demand charges, and it moves on its own timetable: the industrial tariff was raised about 40% in the August 2024 round, its first increase in four years. If you run a factory on a medium-voltage connection, the only reliable rate is the one on your own bill, and any payback calculation should start from there rather than from the low-voltage commercial table above.

How We Got Here, and Where the Schedule Is Going

The current numbers are one frame of a film that has been running for a decade. The government committed in 2014 to phasing out electricity subsidies, and the recent history goes like this. In August 2024, residential brackets were raised between 10% and 40%, the top bracket jumping from 1.65 to 2.30 EGP, and the government adopted a fresh four-year plan to phase down the remaining subsidy, with the lowest brackets to stay supported through cross-subsidy from the top of the schedule. In April 2026, commercial rates rose about 20% and the upper household brackets about 16%. In August 2026 came the 12% average residential rise described above.

Behind the schedule sits a simple gap: the state still absorbs around 100 billion EGP per year, roughly 2 billion US dollars, between what electricity costs to generate and what consumers pay for it. Generation cost in Egypt is pegged largely to fuel, and fuel is priced in dollars. As long as that gap exists, the direction of every future revision is already decided; only the size and timing of each step are negotiable. Nobody planning a ten-year investment around Egyptian electricity prices should model them as flat.

Egypt's recent electricity tariff trajectory under the subsidy phase-out. Residential and commercial schedules move on different dates. Sources: Ahram Online, 2024 and 2026; Enterprise, August 2026.

What a Commercial Rooftop System Costs in Egypt in 2026

Solar hardware is a global commodity, and globally it has never been cheaper. IRENA's cost programme put the global weighted-average levelised cost of utility-scale solar at 0.044 US dollars per kWh in 2023, 56% below the cheapest fossil-fired alternative, and installed costs have continued to fall since. Egypt sits in one of the world's best solar belts, so the resource side of the equation is about as good as it gets: a well-oriented, well-ventilated rooftop array in most of Egypt will produce in the region of 1,600 to 1,800 kWh per year for every kilowatt-peak installed, after realistic allowances for soiling, temperature and system losses.

On installed cost, our field experience across commercial projects in Egypt in 2025 and 2026 is that a grid-tied rooftop system typically lands between roughly 30,000 and 45,000 EGP per kWp, fully installed. Where a given project falls in that range depends on scale (a 300 kWp array is materially cheaper per kWp than a 30 kWp one), on the roof itself (a clean concrete slab is cheap to mount on; a fragile steel sheet roof needs engineered framing), on cable runs between array and switchroom, and on the grid interface and protection equipment the distributor requires. Currency movement feeds straight into panel and inverter pricing, so quotes in Egypt have a shorter shelf life than the hardware does.

Treat those figures as a planning envelope, not a quotation. The honest way to price a specific roof is to survey it, and the honest way to size the system is from twelve months of your own consumption data, a method we walk through in how to size a solar system for your business.

Thinking about your own roof? Our renewable energy team surveys, designs and builds grid-tied commercial systems across Egypt, Sudan and Nigeria, and will tell you plainly if your roof is not worth building on.

The Savings Arithmetic at 2026 Tariffs

Now put the two halves together with a worked example. Take a commercial building, say a factory outbuilding, cold store or showroom complex, installing 200 kWp on its roof, with a daytime-heavy load so that the building consumes essentially everything the array produces.

Generation: at 1,750 kWh per kWp per year, the array produces about 350,000 kWh annually.

Value: every one of those kilowatt-hours displaces electricity the business would otherwise buy at its marginal rate. For a low-voltage commercial consumer in the top bracket, that is 2.79 EGP per kWh as of the April 2026 schedule. The array is therefore worth about 976,000 EGP per year at today's tariff, before any escalation.

Cost: at 30,000 to 45,000 EGP per kWp, the system costs between 6.0 and 9.0 million EGP installed.

Simple payback: between about six and nine years at frozen 2026 tariffs, with well-executed projects at good sites sitting at the lower end. Against a working life of 25 years for the modules, and with inverter replacement as the main mid-life cost, the system then produces essentially free electricity for the following 15 to 20 years.

Two honest caveats belong next to that calculation. First, financing: Egyptian interest rates remain high, and a system bought on borrowed money at commercial EGP rates pays back materially more slowly than one bought from cash flow; the calculation must be run with your real cost of capital. Second, heat: Egyptian summer rooftop temperatures cost crystalline modules real output, which is why our yield figure above is deliberately conservative and why ventilation gaps and cable sizing matter more here than in a European design guide. We cover the mechanism and the design responses in solving solar efficiency loss in extreme heat.

Want the numbers run on your own bill? Put your consumption and tariff into our solar payback calculator and it will give you a first-pass system size, cost envelope and payback estimate in a few minutes.

Worked payback example for a 200 kWp commercial rooftop system at 2026 commercial tariffs, before any tariff escalation. Source: MIMAH worked example.

Net Metering: the Rules That Shape the System

Egypt does allow grid-tied systems to feed surplus energy back to the network, under net metering and self-consumption rules issued by the electricity regulator, EgyptERA. The framework has been revised several times, most recently consolidated under EgyptERA's Circular No. 3 of 2023, and as summarised in CMS's expert guide to Egyptian renewable energy regulation (updated February 2024) the main constraints are these.

Size is capped by your own consumption. A net-metered system may not exceed the customer's maximum load, so you cannot build a merchant power plant on your factory roof and call it self-consumption. Individual projects are permitted up to 30 MW, far beyond any realistic rooftop, and the national aggregate for the whole net-metering and self-consumption programme is capped at 1,000 MW.

Grid integration fees apply above 500 kW. Grid-connected plants above that threshold attract an integration fee of roughly 0.26 to 0.33 EGP per kWh depending on voltage level, though projects up to 10 MW have benefited from an exemption. For the typical commercial rooftop of 50 to 500 kWp, this is not a factor, but it changes the economics of larger schemes and needs checking at design stage.

Export is worth less than self-consumption. Exported energy is credited against your consumption, but the settlement of surpluses is less favourable than the retail tariff you avoid by consuming your own generation. The practical design rule that falls out of this is the one good engineers apply anyway: size the system to your daytime load, not to your roof area. A system that mostly displaces purchased electricity at 2.79 EGP earns its keep; a deliberately oversized one banking surplus at a lower credit rate does not.

Rules in this area move, and the caps, fees and settlement terms above should be confirmed with EgyptERA and your distribution company at application stage rather than taken from any article, including this one. For the broader regulatory and market picture, our overview of solar energy in Egypt in 2026 covers licensing, the utility landscape and where commercial-scale projects fit.

Why Every Tariff Rise Shortens the Payback

Here is the part of the analysis that most payback spreadsheets quietly omit, and it is the strongest argument in the whole file.

A solar payback calculated at today's tariff assumes electricity prices stay flat for the payback period. In Egypt, that assumption has been wrong every single year for a decade, and the government's own subsidy phase-out plan says it will keep being wrong. The August 2026 residential round was 12%; the April 2026 commercial round was around 20%; the 2024 rounds ranged from 10% to 46% depending on customer class. The state's 100 billion EGP annual funding gap guarantees more of the same.

Rerun the worked example with escalation. If the commercial tariff rises 15% per year, a mid-range assumption against recent history, the 200 kWp system's annual saving grows from about 976,000 EGP in year one to about 1.7 million EGP by year five. Cumulative savings recover a 7.5 million EGP system cost in about six years instead of nearly eight at flat tariffs, and every subsequent hike widens the gap. The general rule: the faster tariffs rise, the more each year of delay costs you, because you spend that year buying increasingly expensive grid electricity instead of increasingly valuable self-generated electricity.

There is also a hedging argument that has nothing to do with the payback number. A business that generates half its own electricity has halved its exposure to a price it does not control, set annually by a government working down a subsidy bill priced in someone else's currency. For any energy-intensive operation in Egypt, rooftop solar is less a green gesture than a fixed-price forward contract on a commodity whose price has only ever moved one way.

Why a payback calculated at today's tariff is pessimistic in Egypt: the saving itself grows with every tariff round. Source: MIMAH worked example at 15% annual tariff escalation.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the residential electricity tariff in Egypt in 2026? As of August 2026, household rates run from 0.68 EGP per kWh for the first 50 kWh per month, through 0.87, 1.06, 1.74, 2.18 and 2.35 EGP for the intermediate brackets, to 2.89 EGP per kWh for monthly consumption above 1,000 kWh. The schedule was raised by an average of 12% effective August 2026, with the first bracket left unchanged.

What do businesses pay per kWh in Egypt? Low-voltage commercial premises pay between 1.62 and 2.79 EGP per kWh depending on monthly consumption, under a schedule raised about 20% in April 2026, with most real commercial loads paying the top rate of 2.79 EGP. Medium-voltage industrial consumers are on a separate tariff with demand charges; check your own bill for the applicable rate.

How much does a commercial solar system cost in Egypt? In our field experience through 2025 and 2026, grid-tied commercial rooftop systems in Egypt typically cost between roughly 30,000 and 45,000 EGP per kWp installed, with larger systems at the cheaper end. Roof condition, cable runs, mounting structure and grid-interface requirements move individual projects within that range, so treat it as a planning envelope until a site survey has been done.

What is the payback period for commercial solar in Egypt in 2026? At current tariffs, a well-designed system with high daytime self-consumption typically shows a simple payback of six to nine years. Factoring in continued tariff increases at anything like the recent 12% to 20% annual pace pulls the effective payback down toward five to six years, against a module working life of around 25 years.

Is net metering allowed in Egypt, and is there a cap? Yes. Under EgyptERA's rules, grid-tied customers can net-meter, with system size capped at the customer's own maximum load, individual projects allowed up to 30 MW, and a national programme cap of 1,000 MW. Integration fees apply above 500 kW. Surplus export is credited less favourably than self-consumed energy, so systems should be sized to daytime load.

Will Egyptian electricity prices rise again? No official schedule for the next revision had been published at the time of writing, but the government still absorbs around 100 billion EGP per year in the gap between generation cost and retail tariffs, and it has operated a declared subsidy phase-out programme since 2014, renewed in 2024. Every recent year has brought at least one adjustment, and prudent planning should assume the pattern continues.

The Schedule Only Moves One Way

Strip the detail out and the situation is this. Egyptian grid electricity is on a published path toward cost recovery, the last two years have delivered increases of 12% to 46% depending on customer class, and the state's remaining 100 billion EGP subsidy bill guarantees the path continues. Meanwhile the sun over Egypt is free, the hardware to harvest it is the cheapest it has ever been, and the regulator permits you to connect it to your own meter. The two curves, rising grid tariffs and flat solar cost, cross earlier every year, and for most daytime-heavy commercial loads they crossed some time ago.

MIMAH has installed around 1.39 MW of solar capacity across roughly 110 sites, with operations in Egypt, Sudan, Nigeria and the UK, and the same engineering team carries four decades of experience in turbines, generators and rotating equipment, which is to say we have spent a working lifetime on the grid side of the meter too. We design solar systems from consumption data and tariff schedules, not from roof area and optimism.

Want to know what your bill will look like with a properly sized system on the roof? Talk to our engineering team. Bring twelve months of electricity bills, and we will bring the arithmetic.