Existing and recommended renewable and sustainable energy development in Nigeria based on autonomous energy and microgrid technologies

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Abstract

Deployments of renewable energy technologies in the current century represent a critical approach to sustainable development. Renewable energy can be generated from sources with the backdrop to restock themselves based on timescale. The most important sources of renewable energy include solar photovoltaic conversion technologies, biomass and biofuel energy systems, wind energy turbines, geothermal energy technologies and hydroelectric power systems. Considerable investment in renewable energy in a country can lower the nation's dependency on imported fuels and purchase of energy from foreign market. It also drives technological innovation and generate employment scheme while enhancing clean development mechanism. Consequently, this paper presents the existing renewable energy technologies in the Nigeria and as well makes some critical recommendations to further induce development of renewable and sustainable energy systems based on autonomous energy systems and microgrid (µgrid) technologies. The recommendations are made based on varieties of energy technologies for solar power generation, biomass and bioenergy, wind energy, hydropower generation and the combined generation systems using hybrid energy mechanism. The structure of the study is concluded based on suggestions on how to pursue some impending socio-political, technological, investment policy and legislative issues for effective renewable energy development in the country.

Introduction

Electricity generation by means of any sustainable approach in the 21st century is typically an inevitable prospect for socio-economic progression in the context of sustainable development. This is based on the fact that every independent country must realize the need to promote enthusiasm for greater sustainable development, self-sufficiency and increase economic globalization. Currently, existing predominant energy generation systems in the world largely utilize fossil fuels to generate electricity. The energy systems utilizing fossil fuels could be cheap and more reliable in terms of efficiency and continuity of power supply but some critical environmentally inconvenient scenarios have been linked to fossil fuels combustion. Documented evidences had established that the potential threat of global climate change has increased in recent time and combustion of fossil fuels has contributed the greatest percentage to greenhouse gas emissions [1]. In the context of sustainable development, there must be a productive approach to clean development mechanism (CDM) so that cleaner production could be sustained. The global desire for sustainable development has fostered the emergence of different technologies having different degrees of development as shown in Fig. 1. The deployments of these technologies are expected to encourage cleaner production of energy. Though the technologies are in different phases of research, demonstration, ready for deployment, development and mature stages. It is quite obvious that there are multitudes of technologies required for effective exploitation of sustainable energy development but a number of policy actions and appropriate investment strategies are required to fully adopt the systems for purposeful socio-economic development. Beside the environmental problems orchestrating from fossil fuel consumptions for power generation, there is also a critical problem of depletion of the global reserve of fossil fuels. The negative consequences of these challenges strongly approve the imperative needs for the exploitation of renewable energy in order to deal with the current state of increasing demand for energy.

Over the years, the global energy market has increased as shown in Fig. 2. A great deal of the world's energy is currently produced and consumed in ways that could not be sustained if technology were to remain stagnant and if overall quantities were to increase substantially [4]. Scores of recent research publications in the field of energy studies increasingly focus on the development of alternative energy systems to bridge the gap of demand and supply of energy especially among the developing nations where there are cases of energy crisis. Despite the challenge of intermittency associated with renewable energy systems, the application of energy sources is to some extent becoming important in the quest to propagate socio-economic demand.

In Nigeria, electricity supply to the consumers is exceedingly by grid extension. However, extending power grid to rural locations is not usually economically sustainable especially in localities with rough terrains and long distance from the grid infrastructure. There is high cost of capital investment, installation and distribution of rural energy supplied by grid extension. Other identified challenges are poor voltage regulation and low load factor. In Nigeria, about than 100 million people live in rural areas with contracted access to grid network electricity [7] based on the inherent problems of location and economy [8]. Consequently, this paper presents an overview of the existing and recommended renewable and sustainable energy systems in the context of autonomous renewable energy systems and hybrid µgrid energy technologies. Consequently, the framework of this study is concluded on discussions pertaining to imminent socio-political, technological, investment policy and legislative issues towards realizing renewable energy development in the country.

Section snippets

Scenarios of energy delivery in Nigeria

A sustainable, reliable and affordable energy supply is a backbone and indispensable precondition for economic development in a country. Substantial access to modern energy can help foster economic growth and reduce poverty. A consensus also exist among the energy scientists and supporters of community development that energy is a catalyst for socio-economic transformation at all levels of human society [9]. It was widely deliberated that energy relationships have been established with all the

Existing sources of renewable energy systems in Nigeria

Nigeria is rich in varieties of energy resources from conventional sources such as natural gas, oil, coal, lignite, tar sand and nuclear source (uranium). The country has an estimated oil reserve of 35 billion barrels and gas reserves of approximately 5 trillion cubic meters. In addition, the country is as also endowed with renewable energy (RE) sources such as biomass feedstocks, wind energy source, solar energy radiation and hydropower. Presently, RE application in Nigeria is primarily

Recommended renewable and sustainable energy systems in Nigeria

The growing demand and rising environmental discrimination have incited research and development activities into renewable and sustainable energy generation. There are usually broad inventory of barriers to successful development of renewable energy technologies especially in developing countries. Financial constraints, organizational and managerial weaknesses, lack of technological capabilities, and adverse political and economic contextual factors usually constitute challenges to renewable

Socio-political support, policy actions and legal framework for renewable energy development in Nigeria

In different countries, quite a number of policy support mechanisms have been utilized to breakthrough some barriers militating against the deployment of RE. Policy instruments with implementable directives are typically inevitable for the integration of RE systems into a national power sector. These days, the policy in the majority of the countries utilizing RE are channeled towards improving electricity generation using renewable sources due to their advantages vis-à-vis environmental

Regulation and legislative support so far pursue for renewable energy development in Nigeria

Basically, RE utilization in Nigeria is on the conception of electricity production, thermal system applications and fuel production for the transportation systems. Though, the starting point of the management scheme of the nation's energy policies rest on the pivot of Energy Commission of Nigeria (ECN). The organization is established by the Act No. 62 of 1979 and given the legal authorization to carry out the entire energy sector coordination and policy implementations, energy planning,

Concluding Remarks

This study has reviewed and presented the existing renewable and sustainable energy systems currently used in Nigeria. It however recommended additional energy technologies based on the emerging renewable and sustainable energy technologies for constructive socio-economic development. Renewable and sustainable energy technologies enhance the energetic independence of a nation in addition to capacity building and rural community empowerment. Besides, there is tendency for dramatic reduction in

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