Nigeria Deploys $550m Secured Loans To Energise Communities

The federal government is taking strong steps to provide electricity to highly underserved communities across the geopolitical zones in the country after it deployed about $550 million secured from both the World Bank and the African Development Bank (AfDB).

This is being intensified after Siemens announced a delay in its deal with the federal government to debottleneck Nigeria’s electricity transmission facilities which now faces another five-year delay.

The delay statement from the company coincided with the visit of the World Bank boss to Nigeria to assess ongoing deployment of solar mini grids to deeply needed communities.

LEADERSHIP reports that Siemens Energy, apart from delay in Nigeria’s project, has equally initiated a review of its wind business after taking a large hit to earnings and expected full-year revenues and profits due to problems at its unit Siemens Gamesa, one of the largest wind turbine makers in the world.

“Our third-quarter results demonstrate the challenges in turning around Siemens Gamesa,” president and CEO of Siemens Energy AG, Christian Bruch, said in a statement on the company’s results for the third quarter of the fiscal year 2022/2023 that ended on June 30, 2023.

The REA solar mini grid projects may be supported by a recent research report that says that the equatorial West Africa near Nigeria has been identified as having the greatest potential for offshore floating solar arrays.

By mid-century, the global economy is expected to be largely decarbonised and electrified, with extensive use of solar and wind energy.

While solar panels can be placed on rooftops, in arid areas, and even floated on water bodies, countries with high population densities like Nigeria and Indonesia have limited space for solar energy harvesting.

These regions, however, can take advantage of the calm equatorial seas and harvest effectively unlimited energy from floating solar panels.

Floating solar panels can also be placed on inland lakes and reservoirs, which has significant potential and is already growing rapidly.

Regions that experience waves no larger than 6 meters and winds no stronger than 15 meters per second have the capacity to generate up to one million terawatt-hours

TWh per year. Indonesia, in particular, has vast solar and pumped hydro potential.