Nigeria has inaugurated the first off-grid solar house in Ejigbo’s local council development area (LCDA) in Lagos, aiming to use the renewable energy to meet the country’s domestic power demand
The five-bedroom bungalow in Ejigbo was built and managed by Concept Technologies.
According to Tokunbo Tonade, managing director of Concept Technologies, the idea of the off-grid solar house was initiated from the need to use renewable energy sources to solve the erratic power supply in Nigeria.
Tonade said that the five-bedroom bungalow is powered by a 12.6kW solar off-grid system which runs 94 per cent on the sun and 6 per cent on diesel during cloudy weather.
The solar system further generates 12.6kW of electricity per hour. In order to achieve this, the system uses 63 units of 200W solar modules, three units of 60AMPS MPPT controllers, three units of 3.2kW inverters and 24 units of 200AMPD deep cycle batteries, as stated by Tonade.
He noted, “Off-grid means it has been completely disconnected from thermal electricity and it's been running without a blink since the last one year.”
Speaking about the efficacy of solar energy for the country, he said, “I have been trying to advocate for renewable energy because it has a lot of gains and for Nigerians to see its impact. With generator, you use some amount of money to install the generator, buy diesel and fuel it yearly and when we add everything up, they are higher than what you will use to install solar energy.”
He has further encouraged the country’s banks to adopt the solar off-grid system and use renewable sources of energy to power their branches.
Every year a bank spends US$138,373 to power each of its branches, which, in 10 years, have been accumulated to spend around US$1.3mn to power a branch alone. According to Tonade, the shift to renewable sources can save the huge spending of the banks by giving additional 25 years warranty.
