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Renewable energy resources and the Nigeria geological business plan.

 Renewable energy resources and the Nigeria geological business plan. 

Energy generally is the cornerstone of Nigeria’economic growth and development, it play a great role in the national’s international diplomacy and serve as a tradable commodity for earning the nation’s income. 

Renewable energy also known as a flow resource is a natural resource which will replenish natural to replace the portion depleted by usage and consumption, it is plotted that the sample of renewable energy business plan in Nigeria can be used for government and non government business grant application for bank loan application, for writing business proposals, to write business concept notes, for business grant competition and so on. The renewable energy business plan in Nigeria is a very lucrative business idea which will require a lot of strategic planning and technical knowledge to launch. 

 


With the ongoing restructuring of the power sector and the imminent privatization of the electricity industry it is obvious that for logistic and economic reasons especially under the privatized power sector, rural areas which are remote from the grid and/or have low consumption or low power purchase potential will not be attractive to private power investors. Such areas may remain unserved for the distant future.

Meanwhile electricity is required for such basic developmental services as pipe borne water, health care, telecommunications and quality education. The poverty eradication and Universal Basic Education (UBE) programmes require energy for success. The absence of reliable energy supply has not only left the rural populace socially backward but has left their economic potentials untapped. Fortunately, Nigeria is blessed with abundant renewable energy resources such as solar, wind, biomass and small hydropower potentials. The logical solution is increased penetration of renewables into the energy supply mix.

 

The energy sub-sector especially Renewable energy continues to maintain the prominence as the single most important source of government revenue and foreign exchange earners. Solar energy been the most popular used renewable energy in Nigeria contributed an average of 23% of total electricity generation in 2015 to 50% by the targeted year 2030, the future of solar in Nigeria is gradually becoming a thing in Nigeria as the top alternative power source. Recently though the constant breakdown of the national grid other sectors of the economy are declining. For example the consumption of electricity actually declined by 13.4% between 2002 and 2006 even though overall or total electricity showed a marginal decrease of 2.5% from 5.63GWh in 2002 to 4.3GWh in 2022, only about 40% household are connected to the national grid. 

The rest of this article contains some of the modest progress made in the promotion of renewable energy technologies in Nigeria towards ensuring sustainable development.

 

Agricultural Residue and Municipal Solid Waste

Residues associated with agriculture either as on the farm crop wastes such as cornstalks or as processing waste such as rice husk, corn shells, palm kernel shell, cassava peels, etc., are also good sources of fuels. They are currently burned directly as starter or supplement material in addition to fuelwood. There are potentials for further processing for higher energy contents. There is, however, other competing demand for crop residues for feeding livestock and roofing thatched houses in the villages.

 

Solar Energy

Nigeria lies within a high sunshine belt and thus has enormous solar energy potentials. The mean annual average of total solar radiation varies from about 3.5 kWhm–2day-1 in the coastal latitudes to about 7 kWhm–2day-1 along the semi arid areas in the far North. On the average, the country receives solar radiation at the level of about 19.8 MJm –2 day-1. Average sunshine hours are estimated at 6-7hrs per day. Solar radiation is fairly well distributed. The minimum average is about 3.55 kWhm–2day-1 in Katsina in January and 3.4 kWhm–2day-1 for Calabar in August and the maximum average is 8.0 kWhm–2day-1 for Nguru in May.


Given an average solar radiation level of about 5.5 kWhm–2day-1, and the prevailing efficiencies of commercial solar-electric generators, then if solar collectors or modules were used to cover 1% of Nige- ria’s land area of 923,773km2, it is possible to generate 1850x103 GWh of solar electricity per year. This is over one hundred times the current grid electricity consumption level in the country.


Solar thermal applications, for which technologies are already developed in Nigeria, include: solar cooking, solar water heating for industries, hospitals and households, solar evaporative cooling, solar crop drying, solar incubators and solar chick brooding.

Solar electricity may be used for power supply to remote villages and locations not connected to the national grid. It may also be used to generate power for feeding into the national grid. Other areas of ap- plication of solar electricity include low and medium power application such as: water pumping, village electrification, rural clinic and schools power supply, vaccine refrigeration, traffic lighting and lighting of road signs, etc. Several pilot projects, surveys and studies have been undertaken by the Sokoto Energy Research Center (SERC) and the National Center for Energy Research and Development (NCERD) under the supervision of the ECN. Several PV-water pumping, electrification, and solar-thermal instal- lations have been put in place.

 

Wind Energy

Wind, which is an effect from the uneven heating of the earth’s surface by the sun and its resultant pressure inequalities is available at annual average speeds of about 2.0 m/s at the coastal region and 4.0 m/s at the far northern region of the country. Assuming an air density of 1.1 kg/m3, wind energy intensity, perpendicular to the wind direction, ranges between 4.4 W/ m2 at the coastal areas and 35.2 W/ m2 at the far northern region.

Wind energy conversion systems (wind turbines, wind generators, wind plants, wind machines, and wind dynamos) are devices which convert the kinetic energy of the moving air to rotary motion of a shaft, that is, mechanical energy. The technologies for harnessing this energy have, over the years been tried in the northern parts of the country, mainly for water pumping from open wells in many secondary schools of old Sokoto and Kano States as well as in Katsina, Bauchi and Plateau States. A 5 kW wind electricity conversion system for village electrification has been installed at Sayyan Gidan Gada, in Sokoto State. Other areas of potential application of wind energy conversion systems in Nigeria are in “green electric- ity” production for the rural community and for integration into the national grid system. It has been reported that an average annual wind speed of not less than 5 m/s at a height of 10m above ground level is the feasible speed for the exploitation of wind energy at today’s cost. Tractors and Equipment (T & E), a Division of the United African Company (UAC), at one time, produced windmills in Nigeria. Promis- ing attempts are being made in Sokoto Energy Research Centre (SERC) and Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University, Bauchi, to develop capability for the production of wind energy technologies.

 


 

Even though there is a reasonable level of use of the renewable energy in the country, a significantly higher level could be attained. Nigeria surely needs the technical assistance from pro-active countries especially from the industrializing developing nations.


References 

 

● Bashir Ahmad: https://twitter.com/bashirahmaad/status/1333781389473288192?s=21&t=rHoPv84aZ3BKCo3IWDtyjQ
● Planning Commission, Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning, 1996National Planning Commission (1997), “National Rolling Plan (1997 – 1999)
● Abubakar Sambo: Report of the Inter-Ministerial Committee on Combating Deforestation and Desertification, August 2000.
● Abubakar S. Sambo: The Presidency (1992). “Report on the National Fuelwood Substitution Programme”.
● Abubakar S. Sambo: Energy Commission of Nigeria (1998). “World Solar Programme, 1996 – 2005”, Projects of the Government of Nigeria: Project Documents”, ECN Abuja.
 

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