Reeka's EaaS for Nigerian Residential Developers Webinar Recap

At Reeka’s recent Energy as a Service webinar, we brought together voices from across the residential energy ecosystem: solar operators, metering and grid integration specialists, procurement and construction professionals, and facility management specialists. The goal was an honest look at where the Nigerian housing market is today, where it is going, and what developers need to do right now to keep up.

The conversation covered a lot of ground. But three ideas kept surfacing, and I want to spend some time on each of them.

The first thing we had to get out of the way was the myth that solar has some fundamental limitation that makes it impractical at scale. Natasha from Uwana Solar and Chimka from Acecore both noted that across the world, whole cities and communities run entirely on solar. Industries run on it. The technology is not experimental. It has been proven at scale and is a real option for Nigerian residential development.

The more useful question is not “can solar work?” but “why hasn’t it become standard here?” The answer has less to do with the technology and more to do with how we’ve thought about it. Solar has been sold in Nigeria primarily as a premium add-on: something you put in an upscale development to attract a certain kind of buyer, but that does not have to be the case.

What the panel made clear is that solar, properly designed, is not a luxury. It is a response to a basic operational reality. Grid supply is unreliable. Diesel is expensive and getting more so. Residents increasingly expect stable power as a baseline condition of where they live. When you look at it that way, the question isn’t whether to integrate solar into a development. The question is how, and how early.

One technical point worth emphasizing: in the Nigerian context, battery storage is extremely important. Storage is what makes the system functional across different demand periods and weather conditions. A well-designed hybrid setup, combining solar, battery, grid supply where available, and a generator for peak or backup load, is what the market needs. Solar is fast becoming a key part of a complete energy architecture in Nigeria.

If there was one thing the panel agreed on unanimously, it was this: energy planning that starts at the end of a project is energy planning that has already failed.

From Olawunmi at Cutstruct we learned the importance of developers considering their energy options early in the planning process for a development. Unfortunately, today this is not always the case. Often times a developer is two-thirds of the way through a project and someone raises the question of power. Then begins a rushed process of trying to figure out how to add an inverter , how to run conduits that weren’t designed for this purpose, how to retrofit a system into a building that was never designed around it. There is a high cost to retrofitting energy systems late in the building process including having to break walls or put in new electrical wiring, wasting building materials and labor.

The alternative is to treat energy infrastructure the way you treat structural engineering or drainage. You plan for it from day one, building the process into the BOQ and initial architectural drawings. This way as a developer you knows the cost before you have broken ground, which means cost can price it into the development and communicated clearly to buyers.

There is also a financing dimension here. Investors and financiers are increasingly interested in projects that have integrated energy solutions. A development that can demonstrate a coherent, costed energy plan from the outset is a more credible investment than one that waves vaguely at “a generator” as the answer to power supply. Early energy planning is not just operationally smart, it can open up access to development financing.

On the solar financing side, there is a common assumption that solar is prohibitively expensive for most developers and most buyers. The panel pushed back on this clearly. There is now a fairly developed ecosystem of financing options through fintechs, microfinance institutions, commercial banks, and partner institutions. Typical terms run around three to four years. Deposits range from roughly 10 to 30 percent. Monthly payment structures vary, but some plans start around fifty thousand naira for smaller systems and scale up to two to three hundred thousand naira for larger residential installations.

One of the most practically useful parts of the conversation was the discussion of what the regulatory environment looks like for metering.

The regulatory context has shifted significantly with the Electricity Act of 2023 and the growing role of state-level electricity regulation. The move toward cost-reflective tariffs is underway, and that changes the economics of energy planning in residential developments in important ways. For hybrid Energy as a Service models specifically, dual metering is becoming increasingly relevant. Alvin from Width technologies mentioned also the value in understanding how your grid technology can work and integrating quality smart meters into your project. The best place to check for these meters are the NERC website, which has a list of suggested smart meters.

The broader point here is that the regulatory environment is not standing still. Developers who are paying attention to these shifts, and building their energy infrastructure with that future in mind, will be better positioned than those who plan around today’s rules and ignore what is coming.

The panel’s closing view was consistent across speakers: within five years, energy infrastructure will not be a differentiator in Nigerian residential development. It will be a baseline requirement.

That might sound like a long horizon, but five years is not very long in property development. Projects underway today will be delivering units in that window. Developers who treat energy planning as optional right now are building projects that will look dated before they’ve even been fully absorbed by the market.

The shift the panel described is not just technical. It is a shift in what buyers expect, what financiers require, and what developers need to deliver to remain competitive. The framing that resonated most in the discussion: energy is moving from a luxury add-on to a standard consideration in modern residential development. That transition is already in motion.

At Reeka, our role in this is to help manage buildings after handover and support developers in navigating key items like energy practically. That means thinking about energy not as a separate workstream but as part of the integrated process of bringing a residential project to market. It means connecting developers to the right technical partners, the right financing structures, and the right metering and service models. And it means starting that conversation at the beginning of a project, not two months before handover.

You can see the link to the full session transcript here.

Special thanks to our panelists, Chimka, Natasha, Alvin and Olawunmi!