Nigeria spends 14B dollar every year on Power equipment – Daystar Power MD

… Set to Empower Nigerians, Reduces Cost of Power Generation, Assures of Constant, Effective Power

By Saviour Ekpe

Daystar Power Energy Solution, a leading alternative power company in Nigeria has recently registered its first one hundred power installation in Nigeria according to recent reports. In an interaction with Century Newsfront, Co-Founder and Executive of the Nigeria-based German company, Mr. Christian Wessels explained the extent of their operation and various strategies put in place to empower young Nigerian engineers and technicians, “we hire somebody to train and we do this every day. It is part of my day-to-day job to bring those people on the ground. Everybody working to help each other achieve our goal, so it requires commitment to work for us. So I expect my colleges to work as I work, even most of them are definitely working harder than I do; you know how your fellow Nigerians are working extremely hard”.

            Mr. Wessels regretted the fabulous amount spent by Nigerians to access power noted that if his source of power is harnessed, cost would be cut to the barest minimum and satisfaction of his clients while constant, affordable and available light would be assured, “Nigeria is spending at least14billion dollar every year on diesel and diesel equipment. And if that is true, 14 billion dollar, then that number is so big that we have a long way to go of replacing those diesel generators with solar or other highly efficient systems. Therefore, when I think about this, that Nigeria spends every year of the budget of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, to solve power challenge, then our future is to systematically replacing this, and we haven’t discussed one important point, not only do we want to replace it, but lower the systematic power cost because our power comes below this rate. So, when you are in Lagos, Port Harcourt or any of these big cities, you will see that sometimes we expose our children and everybody around us to pollution that World Health Organization will never find acceptable and health impact on people that are working so hard including myself, every day I sit in traffic and the exposure that my colleagues and I have on the back of everybody producing electricity with diesel. So, there is a long way to go replacing diesel, being in the lower solar energy system, lowing the cost, saving the environment and making the country more competitive. So, we have a long way to go in the next five years and I want to believe that in the next five years a significant amount be injected into power generation effort in Nigeria”.

            He assured that Nigeria, as a major market in Africa, his company invests so much so as to meet the needs of his clients without reducing efficiency. He further explained the essence and benefits derive from their operation, so far, aside the over one hundred systems installed to corporate organization, they have their presence in three countries in Africa, while about 99.9% average uptime and about 340MT+ Carbon dioxide has been displaced, “The majority of our investments are in Nigeria, where we have over 120 systems are in Nigeria. So Nigeria indeed is our main market. We do want to grow also regionally and beyond Nigeria. This is why we have opened an office in Ghana and office in Ivory Coast, and we do this by way of sending our colleagues from Nigeria into those markets so our head office is in Nigeria and our coordinating office for the rest of our activities in Africa”.

            He promised long-lasting and effective service delivery given his source of equipment, “I think the big difference is that we are only working with the leading global manufacturers and therefore we avoid the mistakes that other companies have done in the past by bringing into Nigeria unreliable equipment. Now, a lot of my friends in Nigeria and a lot of companies in Nigeria have had a bad experience because they were buying the cheapest equipment without long term guarantees, without having the service”.

For details of this interview, watch out for our next edition