@those that show apathy towards any meaningful thing in Nigeria,

This is not the solution to our energy problem but one of the ways to help solve the problem.

We keep talking about not generating enough power as if wastage is normal.

Let's say we are generating 100W instead of 300W of electricity.

Let us also say that we could reduce our energy needs from say 300W to 80W, would this not help?

It is clear that there are Nigerians who hate anything Nigeria but could you guys stop displaying your low level of understanding of the issues here?

Without it being good on paper it will not even be implemented, however, not only is it good on paper it is easy to implement and even Ghana is taking serious steps towards retrieving the regular old bulbs (60W) while replacing them with energy saving bulbs (15W).

I agree you all have a right to oppose anything good in Nigeria but what you are displaying is becoming too repulsive.

Afam:

@those that show apathy towards any meaningful thing in Nigeria,

i have to second that.all this constant destructive criticism is tiring.it is so easy to knock other's proposed solutions. but this should be done with recommendations for alternatives.perhaps if all of us are able to escape from nigeria we will also look back and find nothing good with it.

the application of energy conservation means immedaite cost benefits.

say i want to buy a 5 kva gen for my house( thats what i currently use)
if i am utilising low wattage bulbs and efficient air conditioners , i can use a 3 kva generator instaed.
that means less capital expenditure, and reduced operating costs.

i am a single user, but the same principle is applicable on a large scale.

being a backward nation has some peculiar advantages. the absence of a large established fixed line telecommunications infrastructure made it easy for GSM companies to flourish. in the same way, Nigeria does not have to repeat the mistakes western countries have made as per high energy consumption. the absenec of infrastructure means we can, if we are sincere procure energy efficeint equipment without having to worry about the fact that the existing infrastructur(investment) has not paid for itself.


which now brings us to the issues. how do low wattage bulbs fare with PHCN's constant voltage swings and blackouts? are they overly sensitive to the faults that characterise nigeria's power supply? will they require support infrastructure that invalidates the gains( eg a central stabiliser in the house)?

by the way, where can i buy reliable energy efficient bulbs? I'm about to buy an inverter, and i want to put as little load on it as possible.

@Young Rat

Excellent point about privatization. Government could spend all they want on PHCN or Nepa, but without removing inefficient government management, there will never be reliable power supply to naija.

The same people that will scream privatization will be the same that will complain that services are expensive.

With the GSM today in Nigeria, do you realize how the average Nigerian is sending close to 100% of his/her income to manage a single GSM line? Is this normal?

This is a case of the more you look the less you see.

In this age and time we should be talking about massive deployment of VOIP or encourage the use of local PTOs over GSM but again the average Nigeria will hardly see the complete picture.

If Nigerians living in Lagos (about 25% of the telecomms market) choose to dump their GSM phones and choose the PTOs the cost of GSM calls will crash in no time but lack of understanding of the cost implications and outright ignorance in some cases will not allow us do what is best for us.

Average GSM to GSM call within Lagos - Over N35.00 and in some cases close to N50.00 per minute

Average PTO to PTO call within Lagos - N12.00 if the PTOs are different and N6.00 per minute if the PTOs are the same

Again for a typical 1 hr calls in a day we will be looking at

GSM to GSM - N2100.00 to N3,000.00 for just 1 hr

PTO to PTO - N720.00 or N360.00 for the same 1 hr

Same time, high voice quality, same service.

oyb:

i have to second that.all this constant destructive criticism is tiring.it is so easy to knock other's proposed solutions. but this should be done with recommendations for alternatives.

Thank you!  And the annoying part of this is that 95% of the time, these destructive criticisms come from the Nigerians in diaspora.  If at all you want to criticize, do so, telling us why it cannot work, while at the same time, proferring alternative solutions. That way, we'll know you've got the interest of the country in your heart, not just coming to yarn dust and later claim to be "patriotic".  Apart from I-man, I really can't make much sense of the other opposers' rebuttals.

oyb:

perhaps if all of us are able to escape from nigeria we will also look back and find nothing good with it.

Good you mentioned this, because it reminds me of a Nigerian Proverb I came across recently:

"When a soup is unpalatable, and the paste of the pounded yam that goes with it is not smooth, that is the time to know a man who truly loves to eat pounded yam."

True patriotism is only detected when things are really bad, and Afam has clearly demonstrated this in the little way he can.

naijaking1:

@Young Rat

Excellent point about privatization. Government could spend all they want on PHCN or Nepa, but without removing inefficient government management, there will never be reliable power supply to naija.

Privatization is good, but the cost is another thing to bear in mind.

Privatization is the key to bringing not only power to naija, but good hospitals, schools, farms, etc.

I hope this important issue does not degenerate to personal attacks as usual, because every new topic should be an opportunity to better discussion.

You cannot eat your cake and have it.

Privatization naturally comes at a price. Profit remains the driving motivation of the enterprenuer.

Who does not remember going to NIPOST/NITEL to make a cheap phone call those days? Oh, yes you were forced to line up behind hundreds of other frustrated 'phone users', waiting all day for your turn to make 5 kobo calls.

In the end, you neither made any calls, and the NIPOST/NITEL swore they were giving us their best. They even threatened hail and thunder when the idea of privatisation was first muted, today, we all know they were wrong.

So, for all those quasi-socialist nairalnders who are skeptical about privatization, I say 'look back at NITEL'

The cost would inevitably be higher at the begininng, but with competition and open market; prices fall and quality tends to rise.

That's the only solution to naija's perenial and persistent power problem.

nipost ?

Was it NIPOST? or one of those companies created after P&T, NITEL or something like that. Thanks for pointing that out. It was a bad memory.

naijaking1:

So, for all those quasi-socialist nairalnders who are skeptical about privatization, I say 'look back at NITEL'

The cost would inevitably be higher at the begininng, but with competition and open market; prices fall and quality tends to rise.

That's the only solution to naija's perenial and persistent power problem.

The content in bold refers, I dare say that for someone with such line of thinking any attempt at discussing the issue further will be futile.

Enjoy!

Sorry if I offend anyone with my economic perspective.

The NITEL problem was not solved by making Nigerians 'cut down' on the number of minutes they spoke on the phone when the phone lines were dead in the first place.

Similarly, asking Nigerians to conserve power when they have had no power for the past 2-3 weeks is a cruel joke.

Obviously naijaking is refering to NITEL.

there is an issue that most people are not aware of - the power industry is highly capital intensive. Returns have to be spread over decades. No nigerian investor is into that sort of long term investment, and foreigners cannot be sure that Nigeria will remain stable long enough for them to recoup their investments.

Also, the electrical power industry is essentially three tiers- generation, transmission and distribution. I worked for a year in a power consulting firm. one of the things i learnt there was that you do not put transmission in the hands of private organisations.

I stand to be corrected, but i doubt that the power industry is 100% privatised anywhere in the world.

No essential service co. could be 100% privatised, but you understand the need for a controlling share.

I'm not in the power industry, but I know that in many US cities, many different co. supply power to certain parts of the city. So, problems are usually localized, and not generalized to the whole country.

In Nigeria, we have not even agreed to look into the possibility of privatization.

almondjoy:

Like I said-------Looks good on paper!

@ Nainjaking

That was a very good point.


@ Almondjoy

You dont have a reasonable input to the topic and you still got the gut to rubbish another fellow's input.

Too bad

The idea is a good one and its now amongst key issues in the developed world, the citizens are encouraged to do their bit in saving the environment, eveyone is going "GREEN" to save the world for the next generation.

In the devloped world it is laudable, but the question is how long has it taken them to get there and how far have they gone? with the green initiative. True as the writer says Govt has a place to play by encouraging the savers and punishing the wasters, but that can only work when the waster feels punished. Why should people bother to pay more for an energy saving bulb when half of the time, there wont be energy to power it.

The first step is to provide the incentive, the power must be available. I beg to differ our current problem is not energy conservation but generation & distribution, its good to conserve, but what we will be doing is managing what is currently not sufficient, thats the SAP idea, austerity measures, in our terms. To the developed world its conservations as Energy is already available and AFFORDABLE. We just can't  hide from the fact that we must make power available and affordable effectively that is our first problem, it just has to work.

In the short run at the Macro level the cost of Energy Conservation is just too high especially for an economy like Nigeria. To the environmentalist its not, but to the entrepreneur that takes business decisions its too high, theres a whole range of technology issues to consider, production lines need to be improved / replaced, its just too high at the macro level, the cost to the WHOLE economy.Why does the author think the Australian govt put a target of is it 2009 , that after it would have given enough time to cushion this cost. Even England and the USA can't come up with such targets yet, the cost is way too high for the macro economy to bear.

At a micro level, the cost is lower, its easy for me as an individual to decide to stop buying the energy consuming appliances, the cost of LCD is dropping but is still significantly higher, i knw how much i paid for my LCD/HD TV, compared to the alteernative. Looking at the bulb example i will have to increase my expense on bulbs while reducing my energy cost (PHCN bill), theres an opportunity cost, but thers also a pay off in the long run. The question is can i bear the short run cost? A lot of Nigerians can't continously afford the cost.

Now looking at policy formulation, i wont expect the Nigerian govt to put a priority on energy saving, because the resources are already scarce, in addition the socio-economic landscape does not support this, ie. literacy rate, awareness, understanding of the issues, the cost of enlightenment will be too high, (imagine how long the enlightenment on election, corruption has been going on and how much has gone into it) and see the minimal result). The majority of the population would not grasp the issues of energy consumption, you and I maybe, can the market woman grasp it?

Please we need not copy the West on this, they can afford to go green now, we can't yet, Yes we can aim to go green, we just can't. And come to think of it, whats the consumption we even want to cut, how much energy are we consuming, its not yet 1/100 of the developed world, when they are looking at cutting energy, they dont expect anything from us, becos we cant give it. We need to power our industries now and grow.

Now i wont be one to say this doesnt work and not propose an alternative.

Whats my alternative, first totally wrong existing framework, we need a total departure from what currently exist. I propose a  Joint Venture partnership similar to what obtains in drilling crude oil but different modalities. The govt part of the venture could be limited to distribution (for now) at this stage, PHCN should be sell off its generating and transmitting stations and concentrate only on distribution. Then Redesign the distribution, why has it gone wrong. Theres a need for the re-sitting of transformers, gradually migrating from the current situation of every street at every corner, maybe a bit more central at the Ward Level as can be managed, Administration should be by Wards, offices sighted maybe by Local Govts, then States. Eventually this will not be required as when this is in place the distribution chain can be sold off.

At Federal level, its strategic, manage the Joint ventrue partnership, nothing to do with maintenance and supplies just strictly managing and allocating costs and income to the different Units, also ensure the JP agreements are maintained by all parties, ensure smooth operational flow with the generating and transmitting companies, manage disagreements,  reconcilliation of proceeds and the likes. The list is not exhaustive the point being that this is a strategic office and not an approving office, the decisions are taken in each ward on what is needed. Every LG is operating like a different coming profit/loss, no one bears your burden, you magane your cost.

That means totally privatizing NEPA or is it PHCN, selling off all the current generating & transmitting stations, allow those that know what power generation is all about to come in, provide incentives to new entrants, Import tariffs on equipments, legal and regulatory framework to settle disagreements should be clear. There can be a licencing round where bids are submitted at this stage the consideration is whats the cost to the end user, what do you want to charge, the govt has a social responsibility to ensure its affordable, so we consider bids from as many as possible, also apart form cost track record, technical competence etc. The govt would also consider the alternative power generating options, Solar, Nuclear, Wind Turbine etc, its feasibility, what do we have natural to us, in other words what do we have absolute and comparative advantage, if we have coal, crude, gas natural to us, should this be our first options, you know a Cost benefit Analysis, ok we have Solar whats the cost vs Gas, Nuclear vs Wind and so on.

This idea is just a frame work, it can be built upon by the professionals in each area, an engineer will know best how the most cost effective the power should be generated.

Then when we have this working as a govt, we will start talking of energing saving, we will put a policy to punish wasters, but we can't talk about this first, when the process is totally wrong. The world will laugh at us, those that don't have what to manage, manage what

Please we need to begin to look at solutions more than our individual door step but collectively, if we want to make suggestion to govt, its not about individual inverters. This Uninterupted Power Supply (UPS) systems the author talks about are designed for the developing world,where constant power is not expected to beavailable. Why must we choose to be the fool. We need a collective approach, it has to be feasible to the general population and not the educated elite alone.

On a lighter note, the other day i was told of "I better pass my neighbour" generator?? thats Nigeria where people are not thinking, we come up with such short term measures.

naijaking1:

Sorry if I offend anyone with my economic perspective.

The NITEL problem was not solved by making Nigerians 'cut down' on the number of minutes they spoke on the phone when the phone lines were dead in the first place.

Similarly, asking Nigerians to conserve power when they have had no power for the past 2-3 weeks is a cruel joke.

You have rightly stated the truth here, and I cannot but agree with you in all sincerity.

What energy are we actually conserving when all PHCN does is to bring a fixed and well calculated but biased energy consumption bill to your doorsteps at the beginning of every month and at the end of month, they come to disconnect your power line if you have not paid the stipulated bill even when you try to conserve the so- called energy usage that PHCN supplied.

Cutting the tree at the top while its roots is left to grow on and on. What a shame.

Afam:

The same people that will scream privatization will be the same that will complain that services are expensive.

With the GSM today in Nigeria, do you realize how the average Nigerian is sending close to 100% of his/her income to manage a single GSM line? Is this normal?

This is a case of the more you look the less you see.

In this age and time we should be talking about massive deployment of VOIP or encourage the use of local PTOs over GSM but again the average Nigeria will hardly see the complete picture.

If Nigerians living in Lagos (about 25% of the telecomms market) choose to dump their GSM phones and choose the PTOs the cost of GSM calls will crash in no time but lack of understanding of the cost implications and outright ignorance in some cases will not allow us do what is best for us.

Average GSM to GSM call within Lagos - Over N35.00 and in some cases close to N50.00 per minute

Average PTO to PTO call within Lagos - N12.00 if the PTOs are different and N6.00 per minute if the PTOs are the same

Again for a typical 1 hr calls in a day we will be looking at

GSM to GSM - N2100.00 to N3,000.00 for just 1 hr

PTO to PTO - N720.00 or N360.00 for the same 1 hr

Same time, high voice quality, same service.

Your analogy here is very wrong. The same privatization you are critizing as expensive is the same one you are using for your analogy to e cheap for another.

The services of Private Telecommunication Operators (PTO) like Multilinks and Starcomms have limited coverage, they are not capital intensive as the GSM operators. Not to even talk of the international roaming services the GSM operators offer.

Privatization is generally not cheap. It only creates room for accountability and development the more.

mrpataki:

Your analogy here is very wrong. The same privatization you are critizing as expensive is the same one you are using for your analogy to e cheap for another.

The services of Private Telecommunication Operators (PTO) like Multilinks and Starcomms have limited coverage, they are not capital intensive as the GSM operators. Not to even talk of the international roaming services the GSM operators offer.

Privatization is generally not cheap. It only creates room for accountability and development the more.

The content in bold refers, it is clear you did not even understand the statements covering telecommunications otherwise you wouldn't have come to the conclusion or am I missing something here?

My focus is on doing things right and cheap because everybody gains by doing so. We must not repeat the same mistakes the developed world made in energy generation, we should as a matter of fact learn from their mistakes and develop a robust energy policy.

I am not talking about energy generation here as that deserves its own topic and is very clear on what needs to be done once the will do do it right is there.

For example, the US gets about 40% of its electricity from coal fired plants and yet we don't get any electricity from coal and yet we have high quality coal in Nigeria.

This talk about solar generation as a viable alternative is not the best because solar remains the most expensive form of energy generation.

Someone complained about inverters being an elitist product, I beg to differ because you cannot use the power generated by solar panels or wind turbines without inverters as these energy generation tools produce DC and not the regular usable AC we use to rn our appliances.

mrpataki:

What energy are we actually conserving when all PHCN does is to bring a fixed and well calculated but biased energy consumption bill to your doorsteps at the beginning of every month and at the end of month, they come to disconnect your power line if you have not paid the stipulated bill even when you try to conserve the so- called energy usage that PHCN supplied.

Talking about bills, we won't need to worry about that in about 12 - 24 months from now, as many households in Nigeria today, have started using the prepaid meter; so you see why energy conservation is a must. Infact, I don't think you'll need anyone to tell you that you need to conserve energy by the time you start using one.

I usually don't like talking about this issue, but lets have some things in perspective.

Our power sector is a government run monopolistic system. The bills from the prepaid meter are unnecessarily expensive. Its about N2000 per day. Minimum wage is 7k per month. How can power be accessible and affordable to the masses at such outrageous prices.

In UK, the apartment gets billed like 10 pounds a week which is not much compared to what is made in a day.

We have a lot of possible options for power sustainability and energy consevation -
[list]
[li]Hydro-power[/li]
[li]LNG[/li]
[li]Solar and geo-thermal energy[/li]
[/list]

Corruption and security is the real problem in implementing a sustainable energy source for Nigeria. Even if PPPs - private public partnership - solutions are used, the rate of corruption will hamper such. Its a long and sad tale.

somze:

I usually don't like talking about this issue, but lets have some things in perspective.

Our power sector is a government run monopolistic system. The bills from the prepaid meter are unnecessarily expensive. Its about N2000 per day. Minimum wage is 7k per month. How can power be accessible and affordable to the masses at such outrageous prices.

I disagree with you on this, in fact your bills from the prepaid meter is the best as you pay for what you use. I don't know where you are getting N2000.00 per day from but about N3,500.00 that we spent on card lasted my office about 9 months.

Even PHCN came to the office to check the meter as they said that we have not come to recharge for a long time and reminded them that it is not their duty to ask us to use energy in a particular way and as long as the meter was not tampered with and the re is no illegal connection anywhere they don't have a case.

I took them around and showed them what we use and funny enough the day they came there was no power so they were surprised to find power even though no generator noise was heard. I told them that for over 3 years now that I never run out of power supply and I don't have a generator in the office because I use an inverter back up system.

The next thing was that they started talking about getting inverter systems for their own homes and promised to change all their bulbs in their houses.

So, the issue of energy conservation is one that every single person will come to terms with especially with the introduction of prepaid meters.

somze:

In UK, the apartment gets billed like 10 pounds a week which is not much compared to what is made in a day.

We have a lot of possible options for power sustainability and energy consevation -
[list]
[li]Hydro-power[/li]
[li]LNG[/li]
[li]Solar and geo-thermal energy[/li]
[/list]

Corruption and security is the real problem in implementing a sustainable energy source for Nigeria. Even if PPPs - private public partnership - solutions are used, the rate of corruption will hamper such. Its a long and sad tale.

Geo-thermal? Is any nation using geo-thermal energy to sustain power?

Even solar is not a viable alternative on a large scale because the conversion efficiency is still low and it remains the most expensive form of energy generation.

somze:

The bills from the prepaid meter are unnecessarily expensive. Its about N2000 per day. Minimum wage is 7k per month. How can power be accessible and affordable to the masses at such outrageous prices.

I don't know where you got this from, but in my home, a N5000 card usually lasts for at least, one month (could be more).  And it's even this expensive because we do not conserve energy efficiently enough.

Purist:

I don't know where you got this from, but in my home, a N5000 card usually lasts for at least, one month (could be more).  And it's even this expensive because we do not conserve energy efficiently enough.

Please don't always try to be economical with the truth, when it is obvious that there is no energy conservation in Nigeria, as PHCN effectively conserves all the energy! How in the world will be a N5000 be just sufficient for a month This is ridiculous.

The only sensible way to conserve power is to make it more expensive. If it's this cheap, people won't.

Seun:

The only sensible way to conserve power is to make it more expensive. If it's this cheap, people won't.

that is based on the erroneous assumption that power is available at all.

Let's talk about energy conservation when we have energy or power available.

Until then, I'm afraid we would be beating about the bush.

naijaking1:

Let's talk about energy conservation when we have energy or power available.

Until then, I'm afraid we would be beating about the bush.

You are the one beating about the Bush because energy conservation is what a lot of people are going into today especially those using prepaid meters.

It is yeilding immediate benefit and please stop talking as if there is no power supply, such simplistic and wrong statement should be reserved for idiots that are always scared of the facts on ground.

Afam:

You are the one beating about the Bush because energy conservation is what a lot of people are going into today especially those using prepaid meters.

That is the problem with Nigerians . . . we love to copy just about anything without a defined purpose. The world is going into energy conservation because they have the capacity to generate more than they require to power their economies.
We use prepaid meters NOT because we are trying to conserve electricity that is not there but as a way to beat NEPA's penchant for generating dubious bills. Given a choice of a prepaid meter or paying for services not rendered in Nigeria, the obvious choice is not difficult to imagine.

Afam:

It is yeilding immediate benefit and please stop talking as if there is no power supply, such simplistic and wrong statement should be reserved for idiots that are always scared of the facts on ground.

Afam, where is the power supply? What are the "facts on ground" that only you can see? We barely generate up to 1500MW of power, companies are folding up because it is too expensive to run their businesses on generators and break even. Nigeria is awash with inverters and you claim "facts on ground"?

Afam:

You are the one beating about the Bush because energy conservation is what a lot of people are going into today especially those using prepaid meters.

It is yeilding immediate benefit and please stop talking as if there is no power supply, such simplistic and wrong statement should be reserved for idiots that are always scared of the facts on ground.

No matter how much energy conservation you pretend to preach, the facts remain clear: there's not just enough energy to conserve. My folks live in Enugu, and the for the past 18 days, they have had no power with the so-called prepaid meters, I mean no power, none, nothing, zip, nilda, zilch!!!!

And you have the balls to come to educate me about conserving energy, when there is no energy to conserve.
You must live in outer space, definitely not in Nigeria.

I have never doubted the importance of conservation, but it's not the major issue facing us in naija today about power supply. The major issue is generation and transmission.

For those that see power at all conserve.

For those that don't see power at all (like your folks in Enugu) wait for generation and transmission.

Case closed. I guess this is simple enough.