A Paris-based independent power producer, GreenWish Partners said it will invest $280 million (N86.9billion) to build solar-power plants in Nigeria that are expected to start producing electricity in the first quarter of next year.
Its Chief Executive Officer Charlotte Aubin-Kalaidjian said in an interview in Lagos that the firm will build a plant in Enugu in the Southeast which will produce 100 megawatts (Mw) while the company will build two others of 50Mw in Kaduna and Jigawa states respectively.
She saidthe project will be funded 70 percent through debt and 30 percent through equity and on completion will provide power to 2.5 million people.
“We only take risks where solar makes sense, where it is competitive and where there is political support. This government is very committed to developing power and renewables, especially in regions where there is no gas available,” Aubin-Kalaidjian said.
Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country of more than 180 million people, faces an 8,000Mw energy defcict, having capacity to generate only about 4,000Mw of electricity.
Former state-run but largely inefficient power firm, the Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) was sold to private investors a few years ago. The post-privatisation fortune of the sector has not seen any appreciable improvement sparking calls for a review of the process that produced the present crop of investors with neither technical nor financial muscle to run the firms.
Most plans for new capacity focused on using natural gas from the southern petroleum region until the Power, Works and Housing Minister BabatundeFashola’s introduced a framework to accommodate solar-power producers last year.
That has resulted in a power-purchase agreement with the Nigerian Bulk Electricity Trading Plc, the clearing house of the local electricity market, to enable GreenWish sell to the national grid. The transactions are in the local currency but denominated in dollars to hedge against naira-value fluctuations, Aubin-Kalaidjian said.
A Paris-based independent power producer, GreenWish Partners said it will invest $280 million (N86.9billion) to build solar-power plants in Nigeria that are expected to start producing electricity in the first quarter of next year.
Its Chief Executive Officer Charlotte Aubin-Kalaidjian said in an interview in Lagos that the firm will build a plant in Enugu in the Southeast which will produce 100 megawatts (Mw) while the company will build two others of 50Mw in Kaduna and Jigawa states respectively.
She saidthe project will be funded 70 percent through debt and 30 percent through equity and on completion will provide power to 2.5 million people.
“We only take risks where solar makes sense, where it is competitive and where there is political support. This government is very committed to developing power and renewables, especially in regions where there is no gas available,” Aubin-Kalaidjian said.
Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country of more than 180 million people, faces an 8,000Mw energy defcict, having capacity to generate only about 4,000Mw of electricity.
Former state-run but largely inefficient power firm, the Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) was sold to private investors a few years ago. The post-privatisation fortune of the sector has not seen any appreciable improvement sparking calls for a review of the process that produced the present crop of investors with neither technical nor financial muscle to run the firms.
Most plans for new capacity focused on using natural gas from the southern petroleum region until the Power, Works and Housing Minister BabatundeFashola’s introduced a framework to accommodate solar-power producers last year.
That has resulted in a power-purchase agreement with the Nigerian Bulk Electricity Trading Plc, the clearing house of the local electricity market, to enable GreenWish sell to the national grid. The transactions are in the local currency but denominated in dollars to hedge against naira-value fluctuations, Aubin-Kalaidjian said.
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