Bill Gates, Founder of Breakthrough Energy Ventures & Co–Founder Microsoft, during a tour of the Arnergy manufacturing facility Wednesday at Lagos, discussed with Arnergy management, financiers, and industry experts about the challenges and prospects of adopting renewable energy in Nigeria.
During the visit of Arnergy’s facility, a portfolio company of Breakthrough Energy Ventures, BEV, experts called for partnerships with financiers and collaboration with industry leaders to accelerate the adoption of renewable energy in Nigeria, especially in light of the removal of petrol subsidies and the increase in electricity tariffs.
They also said that the petrol subsidy removal and increase in electricity tariff have opened a new market for the renewable energy sector.
“I see a huge energy transition opportunity where distributed solar solutions like Arnergy’s displaces gasoline generators for millions of SMEs in Nigeria given the recent fuel subsidy removal,” Gates said.
Not realizing a large number of Nigerians rely on petrol generators, Gates said that it is a huge thing for the renewable energy market.
He also pointed out that financing customers and reducing cost of systems will be critical for scale.
Femi Adeyemo, CEO of Arnergy, highlighted the modular Arnergy 5000 lithium battery energy storage systems (BESS) and its proprietary energy management hardware and Solarbase software that were developed by the company’s innovative young Nigerian engineers with an average age of 26years. The technology allows financiers, channel partners, and consumers to lease and pay for energy at a cost cheaper than current spend on diesel and petrol generators. Existing customers are in love with her real-time Internet of Things (IoT) remote monitoring and control of the power systems that allow remote shut down and turn on and energy efficiency advisory from anywhere in the world on Android and IoS platforms.
He emphasized that their cost-competitive and durable technology can provide viable alternatives, enabling numerous small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and businesses to transition from fuel generators to BESS, hedging themselves against the effect of petrol subsidy removal.
“Our goal is to ensure that millions of SMEs are provided a platform to transition their businesses seamlessly to clean energy on the back of the petrol subsidy removal,” Adeyemo said. “With the solutions we have developed, SMEs can see 30 to 40 percent savings monthly compared to petrol expenses.”
For Rotimi Thomas, CEO, SunFi, it is not just access to finance or how cheap the product is but the speed in providing renewable energy to customers and the trust the customers have of purchasing a reliable product with great customer experience that Arnergy offers. “Customers want it now. That speed and the trust that the system won’t break are two important factors for the customers,” he said.
Bunmi Adekore, Partner, Breakthrough Energy said that the micro-economic environment enables the acceleration of renewable energy. “The challenge that needs to be uncovered is to get more commercial banks to participate in financing the customers removing the upfront cost barrier,” he said.
According to Adekore, modularization and decentralization in Nigeria’s energy sector are key.
Tubosun Alake, former special adviser on innovation & technology to the Lagos State governor, said the central control of the grid over the past couple of decades led to underinvestment. Now that there is unbundling going on with the new electricity act, there is a big opportunity for renewable energy to ramp up and play a big part in the country’s energy infrastructure development.
