As Nigeria’s energy problem continues to worsen with the national grid collapsing frequently alongside the rising cost of diesel, energy needs at both individual and community levels are also getting worse, with far-reaching consequences.
But there is respite coming from alternative solution providers who offer their services to both commercial clusters like markets and schools and residential communities such as estates.
One of these solution providers is Venco which uses technology to solve local problems and streamline processes in residential communities and commercial buildings.
Venco has been able to use this technology to provide energy solutions to well over 200 estates in various parts of Nigeria through a process it calls vending. It has a presence in Lagos, Abuja, Port Harcourt, and a few other cities including Enugu, Ekiti, and Calabar. It is also in Nairobi, Kenya.
“There is a social reason that makes people live in communities. Instead of running individual generators when there is a power outage, residents come together to use one generator or two to serve everyone and this is a lot cheaper,” Chude Osiegbu, Founder/CEO of Venco, noted in an interview with BusinessDay.
He noted further that, once a community has centralized power, it has to figure out a way to manage and control this power and build back individual consumption and this is done through the use of prepaid meters and vending of energy.
“We have also automated this vending process; we have our type of meter that gives real-time statistics on residents’ consumption because everyone is very sensitive to how they consume energy because the cost is high. As individuals, we allow access to energy anytime from the bulk energy you receive on your energy and also allow you to see your trend of energy purchase and consumption,” he said.
