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A global climate organisation backed by the Rockefeller Foundation and the Bezos Earth Fund is piloting a solar mini-grid programme in Nigeria that could provide the answer to the erratic power supplies that sap productivity in Africa’s most populous nation, a report by Bloomberg has said.
The report stated that initially, the Global Energy Alliance for People and Planet wants to build a pilot in each of the regions covered by Nigeria’s 11 power distribution companies and ultimately facilitate 10 gigawatts of mini-grids.
The programme is adding to earlier efforts to build mini-grids in areas with no access to the national power supply.
Global Energy Alliance for People and Planet — formed in 2021 by the two groups along with the Ikea Foundation – helped build the first so-called interconnected mini-grid in December.
It was learnt that two more such grids are under construction and there is funding for a fourth.
The facilities, operated by private developers, will supplement the few hours of supply consumers get from the national grid to keep their businesses and homes powered around the clock.
“We need hundreds or thousands of these kind of projects across Nigeria to end energy poverty,” Muhammad Wakil, country delivery lead for the New York-based Geapp had said in an interview at the site of one of the projects in Ogun State.
Bloomberg said Nigeria has the world’s largest number of people without access to any electricity, about 86 million, and there’s little power for the rest of its population of about 230 million.
The national grid supplies just 4,000 megawatts, about a sixth of the amount generated in South Africa where the population is a quarter of the size, and there are regular outages and occasional national collapses in supply.
According to Bloomberg, Geapp’s Demand Aggregation for Renewable Technology, or Dart, programme pools the needs of several developers to cut the cost of solar equipment. It also operates a $25m financing facility that developers borrow dollars to import equipment and then repay in Nigeria’s naira currency when revenue starts to come in.
“That activity has observed savings of up to 30 per cent for the developers,” Wakil said of the pooling arrangement.
“Geapp provides grants, loans, and technical assistance to mini-grid developers, taking advantage of a rule put in place by the government last year that allows the mini-grids to operate side-by-side with the national grids.
“The success of the programme has spurred the World Bank to pledge $130m to develop similar facilities,” the report quoted Wakil as having said.
It was learnt that the site in Ogun State is a 1MW solar mini-grid built by Darway Coast, a Nigerian mini-grid company.
It is expected that its power will by year-end give the local community all-day electricity rather than the eight hours provided by the Disco.
The Dart programme is seen as a model for the Mission 300 programme announced by the World Bank and African Development Bank, who have together pledged $30bn toward a goal of bringing electricity to 300 million Africans by 2030.
“I feel like Mission 300 is based on the Nigerian experience. Mission 300 is about expanding this, replicating it across at least 15 African countries,” Wakil stated.
