The Federal Government has signed an agreements with sevenrenewable energy investors under the World Bank-funded Nigeria Electrification Project (NEP) to provide grants for power projects.
Present at the signing of the deal which took place at the weekend at Sheraton Hotel, Abuja, were officials of international donor agencies and the Rural Electrification Agency (REA).
The deal provides an Output Based Fund (OBF) for the sale of solar home systems to homes and businesses in Nigeria and the Performance Based Grant (PBG) for the deployment of mini grids to unserved and underserved communities.
Following a thorough procurement process, the first six companies to be signed to the OBF are A4&T Integrated Services Limited, ASOLAR Systems Nigeria Limited, Txtlight Power Solutions Limited (Lumos Nigeria), Greenlight Planet, Smarter Grid International and Solar Energy. With these grants, the companies will play a major role in enabling the NEP Solar Home Systems (SHS) component to achieve its goal of electrifying one million Nigerian households in five years using renewable energy solutions.
On the other hand, PowerGen Renewable Energy has signed for the PBG under the NEP Mini Grids component. Under this partnership with REA, PowerGen will deploy mini grids to Rokota community, Niger State.
Mini Grids Component Head, Lolade Abiola, is to head the project that targets the provision of reliable and affordable electricity to 300,000 homes and 30,000 local businesses with mini grids.
