Edo plans renewable energy for 50 communities

• As don tasks Nigeria to invest in solar energy technology
The Edo State government, yesterday, said that plans are underway to light up 50 communities across the state in the first phase of its renewable energy projects.

This was just as the government also pledged to extend the electricity projects to institutions of learning and hospitals.

The Commissioner for Mining and Energy, Enaholo Ojiefoh, who disclosed this to journalists said: “What Governor Godwin Obaseki is doing now is called renewable energy 2.0.”

The disclosure followed the inauguration of a solar power project to supply 24-hour electricity at the Nigerian Army Military Hospital in Benin City.

Ojiefoh said that the state government’s partners in the projects are already in the state, adding: “Three months from now, a lot would have been electrified.”

MEANWHILE, a professor of Electrical Power and Machines at the Michael Okpara University of Agriculture, Umudike, Abia State,  Dr. Ogbonnaya Inya Okoro, has tasked Nigeria to,  as a developing country,  invest in solar energy technology.

He listed some of the merits of investing in solar energy including a pollution-free environment, free and renewable energy sources, high reliability and low maintenance costs, positing that the paucity of engineering lecturers portends danger on the training of quality engineering graduates.

Okoro said this, yesterday while delivering the 53rd inaugural lecture of the university, which he titled, ‘Prolonging The Lifespan of Industrial Electrical Machines Through the Development of Accurate Dynamic and Thermal Models.’