Solar-Nigeria, a solar power initiative of the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development (DFID) has said that businesses it supported between January and June 2016 have been able to provide more than 92,000 Nigerian homes with solar lighting or power systems.
The programme said more than 45,000 of these homes are however located in states within Northern Nigeria, and that all the systems were supplied on full commercial terms, with the householder paying cash, taking a loan, or renting the equipment.
The programme’s communication officer, Genevieve Bosah said in Abuja, capital of Nigeria that the solar systems include everything from single bright lamps through to solar home systems that are able to power multiple lights, a television and fan in homes they were deployed.
“It brings the total of homes equipped with support from Solar Nigeria and its partner programme Lighting Africa to 182,000 since mid-2015,” said Bosah in a statement which also stated that the result has kept pace with the record that was set in the first quarter of 2016 when 49,000 homes received solar lighting or power systems through the programme.
It explained the Solar Nigeria works to build Nigeria’s market for decentralised solar energy by removing market barriers through targeted grants to qualified solar suppliers and finance institutions, so they can build capacity and provide solar systems to consumers on commercial terms.
“Expansion of this market represents by far the fastest route for increasing the share of Nigeria’s population that have access to modern energy,” Leigh Vial, Solar Nigeria’s consumer markets lead was quoted to have stated in the statement.
