Solar PV Electrification in Nigeria: Current Status and Affordability Analysis

Abstract

Rural households represent, by far, the greater percentage of dwellings globally without access to the electricity supply. For reasons of low loads, distance from the grid and speed of deployment, distributed energy systems are now considered viable options for rural electrification. This paper presents the status of solar Photovoltaic (PV) in Nigeria and discusses the way forward for aggressive PV penetration in Nigeria's energy mix, especially in rural communities. At present, distributed PV penetration in Nigeria is comparatively low based on the International Energy Association's recommended PV market potential. This shows that there is a gap between the government's policy targets and reality. The solar resource potential across the six geo-political zones in Nigeria is also presented, which ranges from 3.393 -6.669 kWh/ m 2 /day, with the Northern zones exhibiting better potentials over the Southern zones. It is shown that the levelised cost of electricity from PV system ranges from 0.387 -0.475 $/kWh, whereas it is 0.947 US$/kWh and 0.559 US$/kWh for the diesel generator and glass-covered kerosene lamp, respectively. While this study shows that PV for rural household lighting is more affordable as compared to glass-covered kerosene lamps and fossil-fuelled generators for lighting, fiscal and energy policies for market creation are critical if PV systems are to deliver on their promise for rural electrification and climate change mitigation.

Greening the School Energy System: A Nigerian Case Study

“…Literature has identified barriers such as high initial cost of installation, availability of technical expertise, low level of awareness, absence of government policies and incentives, and availability of green energy components [42] - [44]. As a result, solar energy use in Nigeria falls short of the expectations of government [45].…”

Economic and Environmental Sustainability Assessment of Solar Photovoltaic Technology in Nigeria: Rural Electrification Perspective

“…Identifying potential site for the installation of PV plant is necessary to provide electricity which will enhance social and economic impact on the inhabitants [5,13]. So many works have been carried out on the feasibility, risk management and viability assessment of solar PV technology for rural electrification [9,[13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27]. Adebanji et al [11] did a comprehensive comparative analysis of off-grid and grid-connected hybrid system using Abeokuta, Nigeria as a case study.…”

Modeling and Simulation of Small Hydro-Solar PV Hybrid Generating System for Complementary Power Supply in a Metropolitan City

“…Such energy is needed to deliver services for health centers, businesses, schools, offices, home services, transportation systems, food production, and mining industries, to lighten the environment and most importantly for industrialization [5][6]. Power supply in the country is absolutely unreliable, insufficient and not sustainable [7].…”

“…Several works have been carried out on feasibility of renewable energy sources for rural electrification [7,10,13,15,[20][21][22][23][24], off-grid HPS [7,9,10,13,16,20,21,23,24], and grid-connected HPS using HOMER software [3,9,11,22,23]. Olabode et al [16] carried out a comprehensive review of methods, designs and techniques being adopted by different authors on HPS for rural areas.…”