Energy efficiency can yield 2,500MW Virtual Power Plant for Nigeria – Sambo
Prof. Abubakar Sambo, President, Nigerian Academy of Science, says aggressive energy efficiency measures can deliver a 2,500-megawatt (MW) Virtual Power Plant (VPP) in Nigeria.
Sambo, a former Director-General of the Energy Commission of Nigeria (ECN), made the assertion on Tuesday in Abuja while delivering the keynote at an ECN-Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) workshop on energy efficiency.
A VPP is a digital network that connects many small and decentralised energy devices.
Such devices include electric vehicles, rooftop solar panels, smart thermostats home batteries, to enable them function together as a single, coordinated power source.
It does not burnt fossil fuels at one physical location rather uses cloud-based software and data communication to monitor, forecast and manage energy across separate site.
Sambo said energy efficiency and conservation should be treated as a primary component of Nigeria’s energy transition rather than as secondary interventions.
“Energy Efficiency and Conservation are not secondary interventions; they are the First Fuel of our energy transition.
“By implementing aggressive efficiency measures, we reduce aggregate demand on our constrained grid, thereby avoiding massive capital expenditures in new generation capacity,” he said.
Sambo said Nigeria currently lacked a standalone, legally binding Energy Efficiency and Conservation Act to provide a framework for energy management across the country.
He said the proposed legislation faced competition from bills considered to have more immediate fiscal implications and was often viewed primarily as an environmental measure rather than an economic recovery tool.
According to him, the bill should be supported by a Regulatory Impact Assessment and establish the ECN as the statutory regulator for energy efficiency.
“To gain industry support, the bill must create a legal framework for Energy Service Companies to perform performance-based contracting,” he said.
Sambo also identified gaps in the enforcement of energy efficiency standards, particularly the disconnect between federal building energy codes and state-level building permit offices.
“There is no institutional bridge linking federal energy policy to state-level building permit offices.
“We possess the standards, but we lack decentralized testing capacity, requiring a transition to mandatory, customs-enforced compliance at points of entry,” he said.
He identified smart prepaid metering as a key technology for demand-side management and behavioural change.
Sambo said consumers on estimated billing were effectively disconnected from the price signal associated with their energy consumption.
“A consumer on an estimated billing regime is inherently decoupled from the price signal of their consumption.
“We need NERC to reformulate tariff methodology to include efficiency incentives, allowing DisCos to recover expenditure through efficiency-related savings,” he said.
He said optimisation of industrial drive systems could reduce energy consumption by between 15 and 20 per cent and free up about 800MW of latent capacity.
He further said that widespread adoption of Light Emitted-Diode (LED) lighting and high-efficiency air conditioners in residential and commercial sectors could reduce peak electricity demand by an estimated 1,200MW.
Sambo said the combined cost of industrial motor optimisation, LED lighting and high-efficiency cooling was less than 25 per cent of the cost of constructing a new natural gas-fired thermal power plant.
He called for the establishment of an Energy Efficiency Legislative Task Force to facilitate the passage of the proposed legislation in 2026/2027.
“We advocate creating a National Energy Efficiency Fund, seeded by energy tariffs or environmental levies, to provide low-interest retrofitting loans.
“We should propose a Building Efficiency Compliance Certification as a prerequisite for property title registration to ensure efficiency is baked into architectural design,” he said.
Sambo said energy efficiency remained a cost-effective way of expanding available electricity capacity without constructing new power plants or pipelines.
“Efficiency is our cleanest, cheapest, and most abundant energy source, requiring no new power plants or pipelines, only the political will to enforce it,” he said.