March 13, 2018

Sun and Solar Panel

Proffessor Eli Bala, the Director- General of Energy Commission of Nigeria (ECN) said using solar system as alternative energy source would go a long to reducing the electricity problem.

Bala made this known in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Tuesday in Abuja.

“Actually, the National Energy Policy articulates the use of all the resources that we have in this country to generate electricity.

”Indeed, in the master plan developed by Energy Commission and stakeholders, we are diversifying the energy supply mix for power generation to include renewable.

“In fact, this includes nuclear power so that we will have sufficient power, we can export and also grow our economy very well if well harnessed,” he said.

Mr Nduka Arinze, the Head of Services Unit, NASENI Solar Energy Ltd., said also called on the Federal Government to invest in solar power production and standardisation to improve local capacity and reduce electricity problem.

Arinze said the government should begin to implement policy that would encourage investors in the area of solar power technology and to reduce the cost for mass usage.

He told NAN that reducing power problem in the country was possible if government was ready to build the technology in the alternative source of power generation.

‘’For Nigeria to really tap into that, Nigeria needs to invest more in local capacity and in standardisation.

‘’Because some of the problems we are having in the solar industry is the fact that there are lot of sub-standard components which brings about system failures,” he said.

Arinze stressed the need for standardisation, saying there were many solar power components in the markets that were not working.

‘’And if you go and buy things like that and deploy them with the view of generating electricity, you will end up spending your money without having any value for it,” he said.

He called on government to make solar energy utilisation more affordable like in some advanced countries such as in the UK.

“In UK, they have what is called feed-in-tariff, which the government encourages you to put solar panel on your roof to generate electricity and the government buys the excess that you are going to generate.

‘’The way it works is that, if the electricity consumption in your house is like 4000kw per hour and you are generating 6000kw per hour.

‘’Then government will buy the excess from you. So by so doing, you have saved yourself the power bills and also you have made money from government,’’ he said.

Arinze said that with Nigeria’s abundance solar energy, government could encourage individuals to begin to have the system at a very small scale to reduce dependence on the national grid.

‘’So that the grids can actually be used to power heavy industries while solar is used for the lower usage of electricity.

“And by so doing, it will really improve the power supply in the country,’’ he said.