A CrossBoundary analysis shows why minigrids are vital to achieving affordable, sustainable, modern energy for all.
Nigeria as a country is more populous than the entire economic bloc of East African Community – EAC. (180 million & 169 million respectively). Relatedly, Nigeria’s GDP is 250% of EAC’s GDP (405 USD & 159 USD [2016 values]). This data paints a nice portrait of the sheer size of the Nigerian market from a sector-agnostic perspective.
In 2016, Nigeria caught the attention of the global solar industry, following serious efforts by the Nigerian government and the private sector to promote on-grid solar power development and to ameliorate the country’s severe and now worsening power crises. Since then, performance - in terms of real progress in project development - appears to be falling below expectations. However, Nigeria arguably remains one of the top potential destinations for solar investment in Africa.
On the 1st of February, Solarplaza hosted a webinar on the different characteristics and latest data regarding the solar PV market in Nigeria, named ‘Establishing foothold in the Nigerian solar PV market - Navigating challenges and opportunities with Nigerian finance specialists.
The minister of Power, Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola, has been presented with the 20-year Transmission Expansion Master Plan, developed with funding from the World Bank.
According to the latest bold statements made by the minister of Power, Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola, power outages may soon become a thing of the past.
Nigerian solar energy expert, Ademola Fadunsi, has questioned the financial industry for its slow pace of solar energy investments, saying the inability of local commercial banks to grant loans to investors in the sector has impeded market growth.
The U.S. African Development Foundation (USADF) and All On have officially opened the application period for the 2018 Nigeria Off-Grid Energy Challenge, which will provide $100,000 per enterprise for successful applications, following the announcement last month of a $3 million public-private partnership between the two organizations.
Nigeria’s industrialization ambition is caught up in a complex web. At the center of the numerous challenges that stall economic growth and development in Nigeria is the extremely poor level of energy access. The energy needed to support quality health care delivery, improved education and better farming practices is simply absent. With millions of households and businesses getting less than 4 hours of electricity per day, Nigeria is in urgent need of every help it can summon.
Our list of Top 50 projects under development comes in preparation for the two-day event in Nigeria during the 25-26 of April. The Solar Future Nigeria concentrates all major stakeholders in the country and addresses all forms of solar applications ranging from utility scale to pico solar.
On 15th March 2017, Solarplaza organized the webinar “Currency Risk and Convertibility Issues for Nigerian Solar/RE Projects”. The entire video recording of the webinar and the speakers’ slides can be freely accessed here.
Solar Nigeria Programme (SN), a programme funded by the Department for International Development (DFID) says it will provide additional grant of £13 million to help reputable companies involved in solar energy in Nigeria, The Guardian reports.
Over the past few years, some bitcoin enthusiasts have found ways to use renewable energy sources such as solar power to mitigate electrical costs associated with mining the decentralized cryptocurrency.
Arrow Capital, a US based firm and the University of Ilorin have concluded arrangement for the construction of 500MW solar power plant in Nigeria worth US$2.3M. The project is expected to be delivered in the next six months.
On-grid solar will take off on great scale in Nigeria due to the failure of legacy fossil energy sources. 14 Solar Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs) have been signed recently, being the first set of many more to come, and there’s a good chance of a solar power auction to follow.
BLOOMBERG - GreenWish Partners, a Paris-based independent power producer, will invest $280 million to build solar-power plants in Nigeria that are expected to start producing electricity in the first quarter of next year.
Last week the EU’s Africa Renewable Energy Initiative announced 14 new renewable energy projects across the continent, representing 1.7GW, with a total potential investment of almost €4 billion (US$4.2 billion).
Off-grid solar company Azuri Technologies announced Tuesday that it has reached the mark of 100,000 sales of its PayGo solar home systems in sub-saharan Africa.
BLOOMBERG - Nigeria, Africa’s biggest oil exporter, may be about to turn sunward to generate more of its power.
With Nigeria’s low crude oil refining capacity and a troubled supply chain for the import of petroleum products, the strong and habitual dependence of businesses and households on diesel and petrol-fired captive generators is clearly becoming unsustainable. However, up until now this has been the only viable option for power access in a country with terribly outdated grid infrastructure.