When the rains arrived in earnest last May, Chukwuemeka Obi’s solar setup in Lagos went from powering his entire household to struggling to charge his phones.
His inverter was alarming at odd hours, his batteries were draining faster than usual, and his panels, recently installed at no small cost, were producing a fraction of what the salesman had promised.
“I assumed the rain would clean everything,” said Obi, a pharmacy owner who invested N2,000,000 in a 1.5kVA solar system the previous December. “Nobody told me the rainy season is actually when the system needs the most attention.”
His experience is common. Nigeria’s solar market has grown sharply over the past three years, driven by chronic grid unreliability and the removal of the petrol subsidy that made generator fuel unaffordable for millions. The country now has one of the fastest-growing off-grid solar adoption rates on the continent, with the International Energy
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