Renewable Energy Readiness in Nigeria: A Review Focusing on Power Generation

Abstract

Six decades after independence, more than half of Nigeria's estimated 206 million people have no access to electricity. Meanwhile, outages, surges, and load shedding of power supply are common features of areas connected to the grid. These are attributable to insufficient generation, inadequate and poor transmission and distribution infrastructures. Consequently, many households and businesses have to rely entirely on expensive and environmentally-harmful diesel/petrol generators to meet their electricity demands. This paper presents a review of literature on Nigeria's renewable energy potentials for power generation, highlights the power sector policies and reforms since 2001 aimed at boosting electricity access, and the integration of renewable resources in the energy options. The research trends on renewable energy hybridization for power generation, the major renewable power system projects, and the key drivers and challenges of renewable energy utilization to meet electricity demands in Nigeria are also highlighted in this paper. The findings revealed that solar, wind, small hydro, and biomass resources are in abundance in Nigeria, and if fully harnessed can generate about 1,182.4 GWh of energy per day. More attention has been given to research on renewable-based rural electrification with an emphasis on the hybrid solar photovoltaic-diesel generator and hybrid solar photovoltaic-wind-diesel generator. In line with the National Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Policy (NREEEP), there is the need to integrate the solar, wind, biomass, and small hydro schemes in the energy mix, and also extend both research focus and deployment of renewable power systems to municipal and industrial areas in Nigeria.