Peter Ojike
Founder & Managing Director, Wavetra Energy
I read physics at school and had a special insight into the country’s great need for adequate generation and distribution of power. When I visited Guangzhou, China and saw their exhibition on the wide range of solar power applications, I came back and started working in a solar energy company in Nigeria to gain experience before helping set up Wavetra Energy. More people can now independently generate their own clean power, which gives me satisfaction, as it is what I have always envisioned. We basically sell clean energy. We have packages for power based on clients’ power consumption. We do consultations and even orientation online, as well as repairs for inverters and controllers. We offer complete installation, warranty, consultation, and repair. As a company, our advantage is simple: we developed our own way of driving down costs with no compromise on quality. The market here was overpriced; therefore, we partnered with manufacturers in Germany, the UK, and OEMs in Asia and optimized our operations.
Omotayo Balogun
Managing Director, Powercell Limited
When I returned from California, I looked into Nigeria’s problems, one of which was—and still is—power. We did some solar rooftop installation for several customers, which launched us into the solar market. We came up with some designs on how to power filling stations using solar. Though demand was initially low, we powered on. In 2012, we partnered with ABB (Newave), one of the top manufacturers of UPS in Europe. Two years ago, we decided to go back to basics and create many of our designs for gas station projects. If it is possible in some countries where they have less than three or four hours of daily sunlight on average, then it is possible in Nigeria since we have six or seven. One of our plans in Powercell is to have complete off-grid solar solutions for both commercial and residential areas in form of solar micro/mini grid projects. We are working on major filling stations across the country, as well as solar microgrids.
Suleiman Yusuf
CEO, Suleiman Yusuf
There are three key aspects in our logo: the color blue, a camel, and the sun. The blue represents hydropower, the sun represents solar energy, and the camel represents storage, so that is the concept of blue camel. We started in 2007 as a small company, a running store where we deployed small household inverters that store power from the grid and use it for home appliances. Shortly after, we discovered a great deal of potential in the industry, and within six years of operations we grew significantly. Since then, we have been expanding in other areas. We are located near the equator and have strong sunlight compared to most of the world; thus, we should harness this potential. We seek to go much deeper into the industry beyond installation, maintenance, and operations and into research, supporting the government, and education. The idea is that if we do not get it right this generation, we should be able to get it right for the next one.
Ayodeji O’Deji
CEO, Protergia
Protergia emerged from our passion to provide solutions in the energy sector and bring in our own expertise in green economy. We started in 2015 and decided to stay within a particular market segment that we considered to be largely untouched: the commercial and industrial to utility scale sector. Before we entered the market, there had been a great deal of effort in small home systems (SHS), e.g. the 1-10kW systems for homes; however, because of the way the market evolved, there were many sub-standard products, poor workmanship, and engineering such that many Nigerians became disenfranchised and disillusioned about renewable and solar technologies. When we came in, we decided to sidestep the potential land mine in this market and embraced the commercial to utility scale market. We entered into a memorandum of agreement (MOA) with the Niger State government to deliver 1,000MW in December of 2015. The first phase involves 100MW, the land has been allocated, and we are at the pre-development stage.
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