Nigerian firm partners Chinese energy firm on electricity challenges

A Nigerian firm has entered into partnership with the Chinese digital energy sector, Techen Group to set up research centres in Nigeria and analyse Nigeria’s energy challenges and proffer solutions. Mr Ayomide Ketiku, CEO of Macosine Nig. Ltd, Nigeria’s lead partner with Techen Group, disclosed this in an interview on the sideline of Comcore product launch in Abuja on Wednesday. Ketiku said this type of development would be a great asset to Nigeria’s economy as this would create a lot of scientific and technical jobs. “We will analyse the problem Nigeria is facing, it will be specific for development because it will be compatible with Nigerian system and it can easily resolve the problems we face. The research centres will be set up in various positions, we are bringing up a team across Nigeria to do research in the north, south, west and east,’’ he said. Ketiku expressed optimism that Nigeria’s energy challenges would be resolved because they had so far been working with a some companies in this regard.

He said they have been working with distribution companies, generation as well as transmission companies to understand what the challenges were and to understand the system. “In the last 20 years Nigeria has not had any reliable source of power system that is consistent, so it’s for us to understudy this entire case scenario and work with engineers from across all sectors. This will enable us to see how we can bring to light and develop, innovate new solutions for the power system to work well,’’ Ketiku said. He assured that in line with the Nigerian government’s efforts to make use of local materials in production, materials like plastics and others would be locally sourced and manufactured. He also said there were companies on ground that would manufacture circuit breakers as well as work with their engineers to source local procurement.

Ketiku said with the joint venture agreement with Techen and with power generation investment in place, within 18 months Nigerians would start seeing results. Kenny Sun, General Manager of Comcore and Techen Group Oversea operations, said that their solar energy has been given free of charge to Nigeria. Sun said if Nigeria would provide enough diesel engine, there would be 24 hour nonstop power and an average Nigerian would not be asked to pay for electricity anymore.

He said that currently there was collaboration between the Nigerian government on metering, adding that they came because Nigeria is a great country and the biggest market in Africa. Sun said Nigeria was important to their company and very important to the world. “I have been in Nigeria for more than 14 years, I know and love Nigeria very much,’’ he said. He explained that Techen focus on the digital energy, with energy metering as the core, covering AMI and communications, smart metering equipment, storage system and intelligent solar grid. Speaking further, he said they were committed to serving global energy enterprises. “It is an energy data service provider in the field of digital energy,’’ he said. Sun highlighted Techen’s three business groups to include Comcore, Bescore and iTechene technologies. (NAN)