The Rural Electrification Agency (REA) has partnered with Green Village Electricity (GVE), Abuja Electricity Distribution Company, (AEDC) and Wuse Market Traders Association, (WUMATA) to provide 1, 000MegaWatt of solar power to the market.
Speaking during the inspection of the project, the CEO of GVE, a solar energy company, Ifeanyi Orajaka said the project which is targeted to be completed by the end of the year, the 1MW system which will fully take the market completely off generators.
He said the three partners in the project aim to ensure that over 2, 000 shop owners who operate in Wuse Market that currently depend on six hours supply of electricity from the AEDC on average daily basis would now have uninterrupted power supply once completed.
He said, “And we have already abled to deploy smaller scale where about 20 shops in the market have been benefiting from this project close to two years and that has given us the courage and motivation to go full scale to deploying this 1MW system which will fully take Wuse Market completely off generators.’’
In his remarks, the managing director of Rural Electrification Agency (REA) Ahmad Salihijo Ahmad said the project is done through a subsidy from the Nigerian Electrification Project financed by the World Bank to see that the agency takes electricity to economic clusters and makes electricity a viable business to take off.
He said, “As you can hear this place is very noisy to remove carbon emissions through generators so it’s a partnership between REA supervised by the federal ministry of power, the REA, GVE and the AEDC.
“As a start it is a pilot and we are doing this to learn and hopefully after this project we are going to replicate this across other economic clusters. For instance at the REA we are in the position to audit and find out hundreds other markets nationwide where we are going to continue facilitating this sort of opportunity with private developers to come in and provide self-power to the traders so that we are able to make it a financially viable opportunity.”
A pilot project was put in place in 2020 for 2 blocks with 20 shops and an independent report by AEDC in 2021 has shown significant improvements as follows; increased Consumption (kWh) up by 191% and an Increase in payment collections up by 329%.
