Lets-make-solar-work initiative berths in Lagos

In the past two weeks, the first expert seminars for solar professionals took place in Ikeja, Lagos. The seminars focused on power audits for companies and facilities, solar PV diesel hybrid systems and on diesel savings.

At the event, Nigerian solar professionals deepened their knowledge about how to correctly size and deliver mid-scale solar PV diesel hybrid systems that help reduce considerably soaring energy bills.

Let’s make solar work is a Nigerian-German solar initiative by experienced solar companies teaming up to organize know-how and technology transfer from Germany to Nigeria. “Our partnership conveys this knowledge transfer through a series of seminars targeted

at engineers and technicians who are already working in the solar business or have a professional

energy background”, says Olivier Drücke from SOLAR23, a leading German EPC company. “Most mid-sized power consumers in Nigeria including small and medium sized companies (SMEs), public facilities, have one thing in common: they run their own diesel generators.

Operation gets increasingly expensive as diesel prices rise. Also, surveys have shown that generators are often oversized and thus run inefficiently. This drives power costs further up”, added Dotun Tokun, from Solarmate Engineering Ltd.

In recent years, a silent revolution has been going on with solar power as it reached price parity with generator based power generation. This means that using solar energy has become cheaper than diesel generators, also in Nigeria. Yet widely unknown to many Nigerians, this is very good news for many power consumers.

Midsized power consumers such as SMEs and social facilities should now have a pragmatic power audit done in their premises and seriously consider solar PV for power generation. Also, often significant saving potentials can be raised by optimising the existing power generation and consumption infrastructure, even before investing into solar power generation.

The professionals trained by Let’s-make-solar-work initiative used the modern analysis tools to improve their understanding of customers power consumption patterns. They are able to size PV diesel hybrid systems that match with their customers’ requirements and expectations.

If well maintained, PV systems can work over 20, if not 30 years, generating solar power for free after pay-back period.  The project was initiated by the companies SOLAR23, OneShore Energy, Solarmate Engineering and eclareon. It is co-funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and

Development under the DeveloPPP programme. The initiative co-operates closely with educational institutions in Nigeria, such as the Centre for Renewable Energy Technology (CRET) at the Federal University of Technology Akure and the vocational technical training centre of Applied Engineering Technology Initiative, AETI Ltd.