The Rural Electrification Agency of Nigeria (REA) says it is targeting to bring electricity to 1.5 million Nigerians living in rural areas through solar mini-grids.

Speaking during the commissioning of a 990-kilowatt solar mini-grid in Lambata community in Gurara LGA of Niger State, the Managing Director of REA, Abubakar Abba Aliyu, said this is to enable communities that are not connected to the grid or underserved to access electricity that would lead to their economic development and encourage more businesses.

He stated that the project, which was launched under the Interconnected Mini-Grid Accelerated Scheme (IMAS), is funded by the European Union and the Republic of Germany.

He added that under the Distributed Access to Renewable Energy Scale project, the agency planned to deploy 125 interconnected mini-grids, “of which already we have started working on deploying 40 of these 125 interconnected mini-grids. And our target is very simple, to use interconnected mini-grid to create reliability for 1.5 million Nigerians in the next two years.

“For the IMAS project funded by the European Union and co-financed by the German government, a total of £9.3m was provided for this project to create reliable, sustainable electricity to underserved communities.

“As you are working to strengthen the national grid, to continue to provide enhanced reliable electricity to bands A, B and C, through the REA, we are now working to also create this reliability for customers that are on bands D and E. And this is one of the projects that demonstrate this. This project is expected to impact a total of 3,500 livelihoods, and households, with expected over 100 productive use of equipment.”

He added that the federal government is in talks with Japan for a $200m co-financing power project for the additional deployment of 100 interconnected mini-grids to electrify 1.83 million Nigerians through the support of the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA).

On his part, the Minister of Power, Adebayo Adelabu, said Nigeria needs to invest more in solar energy to meet its energy needs.

He added that the construction of the Lagos to Calabar Highway and Badagry to Sokoto Highway gives another opportunity to invest in wind energy.

“All the nine coastal states in Nigeria today, after the completion of that project, do not have any excuse not to take advantage of the coastal wind for them to have renewable energy powered by wind.”