The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) on Monday introduced the Solar Connection Intervention Facility to complement the Federal government’s effort of providing affordable electricity to rural dwellers through the provision of long term low interest credit facilities to the Nigeria Electrification Project (NEP) pre-qualified home solar value chain players that include manufacturers and assemblers of solar components and off-grid energy retailers in the country.
Consequently, the CBN on Monday released the guidelines, which is sub-divided into two sections including upstream participants and downstream participants.
The pathways to energy access, financial inclusion and poverty reduction are closely linked and requires rapid scale of pay-as-you-go (PAYG) off-grid technologies that will create a $2 billion (~N7.5 trillion) annual market opportunity as penetration today is less than 5% of total market potential. To support the economic recovery in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Federal Government of Nigeria (FGN) has launched an initiative as part of the Economic Sustainability Plan (ESP) to achieve the roll out of 5 million new solar-based connections in communities that are not grid connected. This program is expected to generate an additional N7 billion increase in tax revenues per annum and $10 million in annual import substitution. The solar connection Scheme is a Federal government initiative whose objectives are to expanding energy access to 25 million individuals (5 million new connections) through the provision of solar home systems (SHS) or connection to a mini grid; increasing local content in the off-grid solar value chain and facilitating the growth of the local manufacturing industry; and incentivizing the creation of 250,000 new jobs in the energy sector...for further reading, click on https://businessday.ng/energy/power/article/cbn-releases-guidelines-for-solar-connection-intervention-facility/
Source: BusinessDay Newspaper Sept 14, 2020.