Nigeria Must Begin the Movement to Smart, Decentralised, Resilient Grid Now, Says Nwakanma

As part of efforts to address Nigeria’s epileptic power challenge, Smart Grid Researcher, Engr. Dr. Cosmas Nwakanma, has stated that Nigeria must begin the movement to smart, decentralized and resilient grid now, noting that the energy market needs segmentation and fragmentation unless power balance is exceeded by more power generation.

Nwakanma, who disclosed this recently in Owerri, the Imo State capital, at the ICICT 2024, 1st International Conference on Information and Communication Technology (ICICT) with the theme: “Fourth Industrial Emerging Technologies: Opportunities and Challenges for Developing Countries,” said energy and a functional smart grid is a serious critical infrastructure and a collapse of the grid should be treated as a security challenge

He also stated that resiliency and security lie in redundancy and distributed Systems, Technology Transfer from developed nations will not happen, adding that Nigeria must think for herself.

He further explained that education curriculum and funding should reflect the urgent needs of the nation, noting that the Buy and Build Nigeria (BBN) concept should be imbibed in all critical sectors of the nations.

Nwakanma remarked that local and overseas researchers/investors should be in synergy, while urging the federal government to ensure that students, researchers and professors to embracing research, projects, dissertations that cuts across discipline.

The US-based Smart Grid Researcher revealed that the department of Electrical Engineering, West Virginia University, USA is willing to partner with the Federal University of Technology Owerri (FUTO) to ensure a robust curriculum that prepares for the Nigerian energy future.

He added that the US today is talking about reliability and resiliency no longer collapse.

According to him, “There is need for funding of research and development by non-government agencies and private sectors. It is Intelligent if it is SMART, but it might not be resilient.

“Grid resilience as the ability to avoid or withstand grid stress events without suffering operational compromise or to adapt to and compensate for the resultant strains to minimize compromise via graceful degradation. There is need to anticipate and be proactive not reactive.

“It is noteworthy to state here that China just released an ambitious project “Empowering the Grid Edge to Think: Applications of Artificial Intelligence for Virtual Power Plants in China. Resiliency implies response to disruptions and able to sustain critical sectors during disaster recovery time.

“The US Department of Energy (DoE) like the Ministry of Power has 17 Laboratories funded and creating solutions to keep American Grid. In China, there are currently embarking on Non-Lithium Battery research for sustainable energy alternatives.
“Electric Vehicle and Hybrid Vehicles becoming part of the GRID and plan to reduce carbon emission and reducing reliance on imported fuel.

“In South Korea, there is accelerated electrification through distributed energy resources. Also, South Korea is working on targeted diversified energy mix and aiming at Carbon neutrality in 2050.”