Mark Essien: How to solve the electricity crisis in Nigeria

There is a simple and cheap way to solve the electricity problem in Nigeria. Instead of letting big, slow companies do it, let the people do it.

The idea is simple – the government imports solar panels in batches of 100,000 each. These panels are at the lowest possible price because of the bulk.

These panels are sold at cost price to resellers. These resellers sell them then to consumers at any price they want. In parallel, campaigns are launched, encouraging people to put solar panels on their roofs.

People who have solar panels on their roofs are encouraged to distribute and sell to their neighbours at any price they want.

Battery factories for deep-cycle batteries are setup locally to produce batteries for storage. This way, the price of batteries go down and lot of capacity for storing the generated solar energy is created.

And finally, the government introduces a system where it purchases solar power at a certain price from individuals and sells to other people that need larger quantities.

If it takes 2 years to recover the investment people made in solar panels, it will be highly encouraging.

The good thing about this approach is that the results will be seen immediately. It is also highly organic, meaning the places that need electricity the fastest will get it soonest.

Because of the amount of solar being used for residential, hydro and other power forms will be more available for heavy industries that need more power than solar can provide.

And a nice side effect of this: a lot of jobs will be created in the people who become solar panels installers.

This article was first published on Mark Essien’s personal blog, MarkEssien.com