The city of Owerri, the capital of Imo State, has never seen such residential high-capacity solar plant before, except for the one of industrial scale at the nearby Federal University of Technology, (FUTO), which is under engineering, procurement and construction.
Dr Egejuru took the bull by the horn, when he decided to go off-grid, due to the quality of service of the local distribution company, Disco, besides the monthly electricity bills that practically cost the earth.
Apart from the primary purpose of providing 24hours uninterruptable power supply and a 100% offset from the utility grid, the arrays of modules provide a suitable canopy in the palatial courtyard of the owner.
The characterization of the modules includes a rated power output of 580W, with 25% efficiency and 75% fill-factor.
Some 80 modules have been configured in this array, with the hope to generate 46kW of electricity at peak period.
Nigeria, located on the equatorial belt of the globe, enjoys solar irradiance for a worst-case minimum of 10hours of the day. This capacity of generated electric power is sufficient for the project owner and some lucky and obedient neighbors. But power has to be stored for the night time and for the solar downtime.
Some 6units of high voltage, transformer based, hybrid inverters, 10kVA, are configured in parallel to achieve 60kVA inverter capacity, together with a proposed 4units of 25kWh batteries connected in parallel to achieve battery energy storage system (BESS) of 100kWh. The lifecycle and DoD of these batteries are 6000cycles and 90% respectively. Some 9modules, connected 3×3 (series and parallel), will connect to each MPPT charge controller (efficiency of 99.9%) of the inverters. Ktech 10kVA inverter comes with dual inverter, with maximum power of 5500W. It is possible to achieve these specifications with other equipment manufacturers’ products (EMs), because the prospect is still under consideration due to the need to save space.
The project is financed 100% by the project owner, which makes this project a big story to tell the world, especially as it is located in Owerri and by equity. From the expensive metalworks to the last circuit breaker, it is equity finance.
If carbon trading on renewable energy is anything that the Nigerian government is thinking about in legislation, Dr Egejuru is a candidate for renewable obligation certificate, ROC.
Due to inflation rate of goods and services in Nigeria, we have adjusted the levelized cost of energy of this project for the 4th time. Originally, the LCoE is ₦27/kWh, but currently it is ₦32/kWh. This is still wonderful for a utility customer in band A, which costs ₦102/kWh. It is important to hint that the project completion time will be 8months, due to the finance structure (in 4phases) of the project owner.
Dr Egejuru is ambitious as well as exemplary.