LAGOS — As Nigeria continues to struggle with inadequate and unsteady power supply, a report, Renewable Energy Roadmap Nigeria, has said the country would need to invest about $34.5 billion to provide electricity access by 2030.

This means that the nation, which supply currently hovers around 4,500MW, according to the Nigeria Electricity System Operator’s data, would need to invest about $4.93 billion annually in the next seven years to meet the target of delivering 20,000MW to over 200 million population.

The report, obtained by Vanguard yesterday, disclosed that although the nation had the capacity to generate 13,000MW of power, current supply still hovered around only 4,500MW.

It maintained that the situation was fuelled by problems, including lack of gas, machine breakdowns, seasonal water shortages and limited grid capacity.

According to the report, this has  resulted in frequent blackouts, while many households and businesses take to self-generation of off-grid electricity using diesel and gasoline generator sets.

It stated: “Around USD34.5 billion in total investment will be required to provide electricity access to all households by 2030. 

‘’Nigeria’s electricity supply system can be grouped into two: Centralised (grid-connected) and decentralised (off-grid) systems. The centralised system consists of the large-scale generation of electricity at centralised facilities such as large hydro and thermal plants. 

‘’The decentralised electricity supply system consists of a few kilowatts to megawatt capacities such as captive diesel and gasoline generator sets as well as renewable energy technologies (such as solar home systems, streetlights and mini-grids).

“The total installed capacity of grid-based systems is around 13 GW. However, today’s available on-grid peak generation varies and hovers around 4.5 GW. 

‘’Nigeria’s on-grid generation is dominated by natural gas power stations (86%) and large hydropower plants (14%). However, unavailability of gas, machine breakdowns, seasonal water shortages and limited grid capacity have severely limited the operational performance of these power plants.

“This situation has led to led to acute shortages of electricity supply across the country with blackouts lasting for several hours in a day. 

‘’The situation has also made many households and business units result to self-generation of off-grid electricity using diesel and gasoline generator sets as back-up. In terms of installed capacity, there is considerable uncertainty about the total capacity of fossil fuel-based self generation. 

‘’However, in accordance with the number of generators imported annually into the country, it is assumed that around 15 GW of diesel and petrol-based generation capacity were available in the country as of 2015 (Solar Plaza, 2017), while another study suggests around 30.5 GW.

“Today, around 84% of urban households use back-up power supply systems such as fossil diesel/gasoline generators and/or solar-based systems, while about 86% of the companies in Nigeria own or share a generator. 

‘’Given the several million captive generators imported into the country, Nigeria leads Africa as the highest importer of generators and is also one of the largest importers worldwide.

“Nigeria’s erratic power supply systems and the relatively expensive captive generation negatively impacts the economy from the residential to the industry sector. 

‘’Owing to the high costs of captive generation, households and small and mediumsized enterprises spend between two and three times more on kerosene, diesel and petrol than they do on electricity from the grid. 

‘’In industry, government figures suggest that the cost of self-generating power makes Nigerian products approximately one third more expensive than imports. 

‘’For these reasons Nigeria needs to improve the provision of electricity in the country in terms of both access and reliability in order to reduce the use of captive diesel and gasoline generators.”