Nigerian renewable energy solutions provider, Arnergy on Wednesday said it will deploy $9 million to provide solar energy to 20,000 Micro, Small and Medium businesses as well as underserved households, schools, hospitals among others, in rural communities across the country.
This is just as the company signed a grant agreement alongside 6 others with the Nigerian Rural Electrification Agency, an agency of the Federal Government in Abuja, to be admitted into the Output Based Fund (OBF) Standalone Solar Home System Component of the Nigeria Electrification Project.
Femi Adeyemo, CEO, Anergy said the agreement will enable the company accelerate the deployment of solar home system businesses and households at a low cost.
Adeyemo informed that the company in 2019 raised $9 million from equity investors which it will deploy to power businesses. “We have a target of impacting 20,000 businesses by year 2024 and we are already on that track with this agreement that we have signed today” he said.
Ifunanya Nwandu-Dozie Component Head, Solar Home Systems (SHS), speaking at the ceremony, further explained that the OBF fund provides a grant of up to 20% of the system cost which will be paid only after the installation of each system is verified by the companies.
She informed that under the Output Based Fund launched in April 2019, SHS has till date signed agreements with 12 companies and have disbursed over $1.1 million to the companies who have sold over 105.000 systems, across the 36 states in Nigeria.
Nwandu-Dozie explained that the objective of the Standalone solar Home System Component is to help millions of underserved Nigerian households and micro small medium enterprises (MSMES) access better energy services at lower cost than what they currently pay through the sale of stand-alone solar systems provided by the private market.
She informed that an average of 500.000 Nigerian lives have been impacted as a result of the component.
She further informed that the companies forecast to sell approximately 100,000 systems by the end of 2021.
“As you can see, we, the REA and NEP, are well on our way to achieving our universal electrification target by 2023” Nwandu-Dozie said.
Ahmad Salihijo Ahmad, Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer of REA, said the essence of the grant is to make access to electricity more affordable for the end user and more attractive to the private sector.
Ahmad noted that the over $1 million disbursed so far, is part of the loan that Nigeria took from the world bank for the rural electrification
“We have delivered over 80,000 homes systems which has improved access to power and improved power supply. We hope to deliver one million solar home systems to those in rural communities which is the list sustainable solution”, he said.
Theophilus Nweke, MD Cloud Energy also expressed its readiness to support the federal government deliver renewable energy to underserved homes and businesses in several communities.
