Replacing diesel generators with locally-made solar power equipment

Nigerians are acquainted with getting their electrical energy from off-grid sources. With the nation’s nationwide power grid producing only a fraction of the inhabitants’s vitality wants, it’s estimated that round 60 million particular person Nigerians, and over 85% of the nation’s companies, own personal power generating units. The overwhelming majority of those are fossil gas powered generators.

Part of the explanation why generators, significantly diesel, have remained so pervasive is the excessive up-front price, and complexity, of the alternate options. Renewable vitality sources comparable to solar require a variety of various elements – together with batteries, inverters, and cost controllers – to retailer the vitality, convert it to a helpful state, and to control the circulation of electrical energy. These elements have to be imported from overseas and restore work usually requires specialist expertise, which could be expensive and onerous to search out.

Ogechukwu Uchechukwu, co-founder of Greenage Technologies, is on a mission to make it simpler and cheaper for Nigerians to purchase solar residence methods – by manufacturing them in Nigeria.

From bed room to manufacturing facility

Like many different Nigerians, the Greenage workforce discovered electrical energy to be a significant problem while learning on the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, in Enugu State.

“We were managing a serviced apartment rental business with a few other students whilst studying at the University of Nsukka,” he says. “But of course, reliability of electricity was a major problem. We looked into buying solar but it was very expensive … many people simply cannot afford to pay for it.”

So Uchechukwu – alongside with co-founders Aaron Esumeh, Kingsley Okereke, Nnaemeka Udehand and Godwin Nwangele – determined to attempt to handle the problem by manufacturing inverters and different equipment themselves, sourcing particular person elements wherever they might, and assembling them on circuit boards of their rooms.

They offered an MVP (minimal viable product) on the college’s commerce honest in 2016. The occasion was attended by the state governor and this, alongside with different public appearances, helped the brand new enterprise to draw publicity and funding. By January 2019, Greenage Technologies had secured over $157,000 in seed funding over two separate tranches.

“When we started, we were doing more advocacy work,” Uchechukwu explains. “We were going around talking to people, educating them about things such as the capabilities of solar, as well as the potential fuel savings.”

“There is a kind of stigma around solar power in Nigeria. Lots of people had faith in solar when it first came on the scene, but then lost faith because it did not work for them. We spoke to people to understand why this was – often there was a lack of trust. Equipment would get damaged or stop working, and no one would be able to fix it. Then it ends up getting abandoned.”

A market past Lagos

In January 2018, Greenage relocated to the state capital of Enugu, to arrange a modest manufacturing facility. The workforce believes that smaller, regional cities like Enugu current large alternatives and are sometimes missed when in comparison with extra in style and well-known hubs comparable to Lagos.

“Lagos and Abuja are the hotspots for most solar retailers. By working with a network of distributors and technicians, our products and services are currently available in 21 of Nigeria’s 36 states – this is a huge market of tens of millions of people who need access to reliable electricity.”

“Most of the people in the solar trade in Nigeria are traders – importing equipment and selling it to consumers. We don’t see ourselves as simply traders or salespeople. We see an opportunity to capture a lot more of the value chain here in Nigeria.”

A Greenage worker installs a solar vitality answer for a shopper in Nigeria.

Manufacturing course of

Greenage’s manufacturing facility in Enugu is stuffed with numerous packing containers of various elements, able to be connected to boards and housed inside casings by the meeting workforce. Uchechukwu explains that 70% of the components are sourced regionally, with some specialist elements, comparable to diodes, being imported. Sourcing the uncooked supplies regionally, Uchechukwu and his co-founders agree, is the largest problem on this enterprise.

Greenage sells a full vary of merchandise, together with the cost controllers and inverters assembled in Enugu. A small inverter retails for 160,000 naira (round $260), while the most important retail for 3,000,000 naira ($4,920). These models can attain as much as 30 KvA, which might deal with sufficient power to gentle a big household residence, with quite a few heavy home equipment.

Uchechukwu, whose goal is to interchange imported elements with regionally made equivalents, believes that Greenage’s merchandise could be as much as 30% cheaper than the imported variations. Its inverters and cost controllers are interchangeable with different manufacturers of panels and batteries, and might due to this fact be slotted into new or current setups.

Additional elements comparable to solar panels and batteries are additionally bought, though they aren’t but manufactured regionally.

Making set up straightforward

As effectively as value, complexity of setup is one other main barrier for a lot of customers that may in any other case think about solar power. Unlike diesel generators, there are numerous totally different elements to consider, and lots of technical phrases that individuals are unfamiliar with.

So in addition to producing elements, Greenage Technologies additionally has a enterprise unit that specialises in putting in solar micro-grids and residential methods. The workforce will examine the home or enterprise, and supply a suggestion for precisely which system is required.

“We have installed more than 700kW of solar power across the country – that’s more than 200 homes across the country, and more than 50 businesses, including hospitals and laboratories.”

Whilst most of this enterprise has come from word-of-mouth, the corporate additionally makes use of a mixture of conventional and digital advertising and marketing channels, together with billboards, radio, Facebook and LinkedIn adverts, to achieve new clients.

Future plans

Greenage not too long ago raised $500,000 in funding from affect investor All On Nigeria. It plans to make use of these funds to increase the manufacturing facility and distribution community, in order that the enterprise can produce and promote extra models.

By the top of 2023, the corporate is aiming for a month-to-month product quantity of 200 models, and 500 by the top of 2025. Beyond that, it’s exporting past Nigeria and replicating its factories in different international locations.

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