Lumos which is a Dutch company operating in the off-grid solar space in Nigeria plans to substantially scale up its presence in the Western African country. Nigeria like many of the other African states has a huge energy access issue with a large section of its population having no access to electricity as there is no grid. Even the people who have access to the power grid face issues of reliability and quality as the power generation and distribution infrastructure remains in a very bad state.
The lack of power is one of the major impediments to the growth of the economy and a better life for its people. Lumos plans to address this energy access issue by expanding its capacity tenfold using incentives to be given by the Nigerian government through World Bank funding.
Lumos installs solar home lighting (SLS) systems which typically consist of solar panels, battery, fans, lights, etc. as a unit. This SLS can work as a completely independent unit to provide power to a household that has no access to the grid. The SLS can be customized for the requirement of a household depending on its paying capacity as well as its power requirements. Given that many households do not have money to pay for an SLS at one go, the company takes the money from customers using a Pay as you Go (PAYG) model which is quite popular with many off-grid solar companies in Africa. The company uses the MTN telecom company’s infrastructure for distribution as well as bill collection.
The SLS systems are sold using a market-driven model as households spend quite a significant amount on their energy needs to buy kerosene. Not only is kerosene expensive but it also affects health as well as causing global warming. The SLS system sold by Lumos can provide the same energy requirement at a much more cheaper price and is also climate-friendly to boot. Scaling up these solutions is a problem which has been smartly been solved by using the infrastructure of MTN. The funds from the Nigerian government will help boost the growth of Lumos which will target not only non-grid households but also on-grid households that face the problems of unreliable and poor quality power.
Also, read about Off-Grid Solar System in India and how the Off-grid Industry goes for a Toss, with India reaching 100% electrification.
