By Charles Mgbolu & Daniel Alfred
No doubt, Information Technology continues to breach new knowledge boundaries all around the world. Today, ‘complicated’ professions like solar engineering now can be studied to near perfection on the internet.

Anthony Okeyika

In this interview, Arthur Anthony Okeyika, CEO and chief engineer of Arthur Energy Technology Ltd, tells a remarkable story of IT and how it has helped Nigerian solar engineers to better understand and promote this alternative source of energy in the country.

But then, he warns, quacks who know nothing about IT and solar electricity may kill this budding profession. Excepts:

Tell our readers about solar energy.

Solar energy is a technology that involves converting the sun’s energy into electricity through the means of a solar panel. This energy from the panel is stored inside a battery through a charge controller.

The current in the battery is a direct current, or DC, and that is the solar energy produced through the sun. But for it to be used in the home. it would need what is called an inverter. The inverter converts the DC current to AC, or alternatiing current. This is the one used domestically in the home or elsewhere.

Has IT, particularly the internet played a role in this profession?

To be frank with you, I do not know how businesses of old managed to survive without the internet. This is actually the key to the business. We can now transact business dealings without even seeing face to face with our clients. In most cases, we do not even know what they look like.

We have never met them.  Our website particularly has been a wonderful tool. We have had contacts from people who have visited it and then struck deals with us. We order for most of the panels online as we are now even able to pay for them online.

How IT compliant are solar engineers in the country?

It really depends on the level of education. Unfortunately, many who parade themselves as solar engineers in this country are quacks and they are not even computer literate as this has shown in their works.

There is a lot of new information on the internet concerning solar power that these people do not have. Even those of them who are computer literate do not take the time to study these materials.

They are impatient with the research part of our profession and continue to work with whatever old information they have, but then they forget that these information are updated constantly. I do a lot of research and updating.

How can you market yourself to a global audience when you still talk stale? Information is power but these people do not have the information and so their output has been very weak.

The internet particularly has helped me a lot because through it I have been able to under go a lot of training and online courses as well. If you are not IT-oriented in this profession then you can never really succeed as a solar engineer.

How badly have these quacks affected the profession’s reputation and name?

They have adversely affected us as professionals because you keep hearing complaints of solar engineering projects that do not work or solar projects that failed. It is because some people who have no idea about it have gone into it.

The truth is that all professions have quacks. In our case these people don’t know anything about this work. Some of them go for one-day seminars and then come out to declare themselves solar engineers.

Many of them come to my office here and ask me to put them through or to get some ideas but I always advise them to go and further their studies in this field. They have gone around sampling solar jobs that are not working and it is  ruining our reputation as competent solar engineers in this country.

The problem however is not really these quacks but people and government agencies who have been giving out projects to people who really do not know the job. When you look more closely you’ll see that the problem is coming from these old government engineers that work with whatever information that they have.

These people end up giving government wrong specifications. However, I can tell you that we are growing phenomenally and our work is beginning to speak for us. More and more solar projects are being commissioned everyday.

Is your profession as a body doing anything to raise this awareness on the importance of IT particularly the internet to solar engineering?

To be frank with you, we do not have a solid association as of now in Nigeria. There are a few small ones but they are not strong at all and without such strong member unions like what we have with other professional associations, it will be difficult to go after these quacks.

You cannot just go and harass somebody or say that he is a quack when you have no standard measuring guidelines. Because every body out there in the field who call themselves solar engineers claim to be professionals. But I believe with time because we will have a body.

This is just something that is starting, we will have a strong union that will be able to fight this problem for us.

Tell us about Arthur Energy?

Arthur Energy Technology Limited started from the scratch. I underwent training and took courses, especially from the internet to gather facts and information about solar engineering before I began the business fully.

I didn’t even start with solar engineering but went first into radio and television. But I officially started the solar business about four years ago.