Electricity Featured

Deploying technology to address Nigeria’s electricity woes

That Nigeria’s electricity sector is comatose is not a closely-guarded secret. The electricity supply is as erratic and unstable as usual, not unlike the country itself.

I find it quite unfortunate that, due to the almost perpetual state of darkness across different parts of Nigeria, many have given up on the country’s electricity sector.

Most Nigerians will unanimously agree that the electricity supply in the country is poor. It, therefore, comes as no shock that the popularly recognised ‘giant of Africa’ IS placed 171 out of 190 nations in terms of access to electricity.

Research has it that Nigeria’s power generation, which is mostly thermal and hydro, has an installed capacity of roughly 12,522 megawatts, yet in reality, it is only able to deliver around 4,500 megawatts to its more than 200 million citizens.

The average Nigerian, adult or youngster, understands that here, power outages are the norm. For example, despite our often suffocatingly hot weather, if you visit government-owned schools and some low-fees private schools in parts of the country, whether urban, peri-urban, or rural areas, you won’t be surprised at the condition in which students are expected to learn. From hot classrooms to unused learning equipment due to lack of power supply, electricity shortage is bedevilling not only the education sector but every aspect of modern life.

Even in public health centres, patients would consider themselves lucky if they were attended to in a conducive, well-aired environment where generators or solar systems are on standby.

According to the International Monetary Fund , Nigeria loses $29bn a year, which is about 5.8 per cent of its Gross Domestic Product, no thanks to a lack of reliable power supply. And because citizens who can afford it would rather find an alternative solution to power issues instead of relying on the government’s empty promises of better days, Nigerians spend around $14bn every year on power generating sets and fossil fuel. This, among other reasons, is why Nigeria is gradually losing its appeal as one of the leading destinations for investment in Africa.

It goes without saying that stable, reliable, and affordable power supply is mportant criteria for wealth creation, local industry growth, foreign direct investment as well as economic growth and development. However you choose to word it, the abysmal state of electricity supply continues to spell doom for the growth of industries in the country. Irrespective of the field or sector in which a business operates, electricity is an indispensable ingredient in getting anything done.

As such, tackling Nigeria’s energy issue requires a multi-dimensional approach. I may not be an expert in the energy industry, but I understand and believe in the transformative power of technology. In this piece, I will explore ways technology can tackle Nigeria’s power crisis.

While I won’t bore you with all the somewhat confusing details, Nigeria’s lack of reliable electricity supply has a long and colourful history. In 2013, the Nigerian government went down the privatisation route and unbundled the former Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) into 6 generation companies and 11 distribution companies, and sold them to core private sector investors.

Fast forward to 2022, stakeholders, including some members of the government and citizens alike, have blamed the epileptic condition of Nigeria’s power supply on the privatisation of the sector to inexperienced companies that have failed to improve the decrepit transmission system.

Rather than playing the blame game, the government, GenCos, DisCos, and IPPs need to work together to resolve the power crisis. An obvious solution is renewable energy, which has long been considered low-hanging fruit. Citizens should be encouraged and/or given incentives to promote mass adoption of renewable energy – the most popular being solar energy- as a clean alternative over the burning of dirty fuels to generate electricity. Diversifying the country’s energy mix will reduce the burden of producing electricity from gas, hydro and thermal energy sources.

Examining the role of technology

In recent years, the power sector has witnessed a significant digital transformation, largely driven by the emergence of renewable sources of energy and the global call to address climate change.

Be that as it may, leveraging digital technology in the electricity industry can ensure greater transparency in operations, increase efficiency and reliability.

An analysis of the global power sector by the International Energy Agency shows that digitalisation has the potential to save around $80 billion per year or about 5% of total annual power generation costs. Per the report, this can be achieved by reducing operational and maintenance costs, while improving power plant and network efficiency, reducing unplanned outages and downtime, and extending the operational lifetime of assets.

One example of this is the use of drones to cheaply monitor thousands of kilometres of transmission lines over rough terrain.

Another case study is the smart metering system driven by the Internet of Things (IoT) technology. When designed and used effectively, smart meters can help customers to be more informed about their energy usage. For energy distributors, smart meters and other remote monitoring solutions can help solve the problem of meter tampering which causes them to lose revenue.

Equally important, if not more so, is energy data analytics. A serious bone of contention between Nigeria’s power distributors and consumers is exorbitant utility charges.

Since many Nigerians do not know how much power they consume and cost, they are unfairly billed unreasonably large amounts of money in exchange for a pitiful quantity of electricity. In light of this, energy data analytics would be useful in ensuring that Nigerians get value for their money, paying for exactly what they consume.

From remote monitoring solutions to interconnection, financing, payment solutions, modelling and system design, technology is an invaluable tool in addressing some of Nigeria’s electricity woes.

I should reiterate, at this juncture, that fixing the energy crisis is not a task that can be done in a few weeks. Nonetheless, what I have done is to highlight areas in which technology could help boost the power sector while providing electricity access to more people with limited or no access to it.

To this end, relevant stakeholders in the industry-  GenCos, DisCos and the government- must be willing to invest in digital technologies to accelerate transformation as well as build digital expertise within their workers.

Also, the government- across all tiers- needs to step up its energy policies and be more deliberate and thorough in its implementation of such policies. This is because our technology ecosystem will never realize its full potential if we do not fix the transgenerational issues of epileptic power supply.

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