How Lagos estates are going off-grid

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If you live in a Nigerian residential estate, you probably considered fighting with your estate management at least once last year.

With higher grid electricity tariffs and diesel prices tripling between January and December 2022, you definitely got higher service charges for worse service. A friend of mine saw her service charge increase by 50% and daily electricity hours decrease to seven hours daily—talk about a service charge with no service.

Unfortunately, her estate also has a rule that doesn’t allow residents to install their own generators, leaving her reliant on the estate’s inadequate electricity.

This is a significant reason estates in Lagos, where residents are willing and able to pay for reliable electricity, are going off-grid and looking to companies like Viathan. Viathan provides gas-powered off-grid electricity to wholesale residential customers, and commercial and industrial (C&I) customers, between Lekki, VI, Marina and Ikoyi in Lagos.

We will examine their business model, how they’ve worked seamlessly with electricity distribution companies and some of their challenges.

How Viathan serves Lagos

From conversations with off-grid electricity providers, signing the first customer can be the hardest, especially with C&I-facing companies.