A Pay As You Go Solar Micro Grid Platform for Nigeria's Market Clusters

Nigeria faces one of the world's largest electricity access deficits, with an estimated 87 million people lacking reliable power. For the country's informal market traders, a population of roughly 40 million informal businesses, this gap is filled by diesel generators, at a cost that has nearly tripled since the 2023 fuel subsidy removal. Diesel now retails above NGN 1,900 to NGN 2,000 per litre, and shared market generators typically run only 6 to 8 hours per day, billed through flat levies that charge every stall the same regardless of actual consumption. This report presents SolarNaira, a platform designed to replace this diesel levy system with solar generated power billed per kilowatt-hour through mobile money. Rather than building new generation or metering hardware, SolarNaira is architected as an integration and billing layer connecting two infrastructures that already exist in Nigeria: licensed solar/mini grid developers, who already generate embedded power, and prepaid meter companies (including NERC-licensed Meter Asset Providers), who already deploy STS compliant meters and token-vending systems. SolarNaira's own build is the orchestration layer, wallet and billing engine, trader-facing USSD/app interface, and market association dashboard that ties both partners together for this specific use case. Based on a cost model built from current Nigerian diesel pricing and typical generator efficiency, diesel-generated electricity in a shared market generator setup costs an estimated NGN 540 per kWh, against a projected NGN 150 per kWh for solar hybrid power delivered through this platform a modeled reduction of roughly 65 to 70%. The same model projects a 70 to 85% reduction in CO₂ emissions per market cluster, and an increase in daily power access hours from roughly 8 to 20. These are modeled projections, not measured outcomes; Section 4 (Methodology) and the accompanying validation research plan set out how they would be confirmed against real data from a pilot market. The report sets out the problem and its context, reviews existing literature on Nigerian energy access and mini grid deployment, details the proposed solution's architecture and business model, and closes with policy recommendations, an implementation strategy, key stakeholders, and an assessment of expected impact and sustainability.