Elektron Energy is preparing to switch on a 40-megawatt power plant in Victoria Island, giving businesses in one of Lagos’s busiest commercial districts a dedicated alternative to diesel generators and an overstretched national grid.
The developer opened the site to customers and business leaders on Thursday, offering technical briefings on the plant and its Wärtsilä engines ahead of a full commissioning. The Victoria Island Power project pairs Elektron’s generation capacity with distribution infrastructure operated alongside Eko Electricity Distribution Co., under a license from the Lagos State Electricity Regulatory Commission.
The project is backed by ARM-Harith Infrastructure Fund, the Nigeria Sovereign Investment Authority, InfraCredit and the Bank of Industry, a lineup that signals continued appetite among Nigerian institutional investors for embedded power deals, even as the broader economy grapples with currency volatility and high borrowing costs.
Embedded power, electricity generated and distributed locally to a specific cluster of customers, bypassing the constraints of the national grid, has become one of the more active corners of Nigeria’s energy sector as businesses tire of the costs of self-generation.
Lagos State, home to the country’s commercial capital, has issued a growing number of licenses for such projects as it looks to plug gaps left by unreliable grid supply.
Elektron has already built out similar infrastructure elsewhere in Nigeria, including the Rack Centre independent power project and a hybrid plant in Ibadan. Victoria Island represents its move into a denser, higher-value commercial corridor, where banks, multinational offices and hospitality businesses currently rely heavily on diesel generators to keep operating during grid outages.
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“For years, businesses in Victoria Island have had to operate within the constraints of unreliable power, either absorbing the cost and complexity of self-generation or navigating the uncertainty of the grid,” Ayomide Oladapo, Elektron’s executive director for business development, said at the event. “Neither model provides the predictability businesses need to plan, invest and grow with confidence.”
Oladapo said the new network is intended to remove the operational overhead tied to fuel logistics and generator upkeep, giving businesses more predictable energy costs.
Wärtsilä, the Finnish engine maker supplying the plant’s technology, said the project reflects a broader push to bring flexible power generation closer to end users in fast-growing African cities.
“Victoria Island Power shows what happens when the right technical expertise, infrastructure and long-term planning come together,” said Mika Gummerus, site manager for energy services and upgrades at Wärtsilä. He said the partnership spans system design through to ongoing operation of the plant.
The plant’s 40-megawatt capacity is modest relative to Nigeria’s overall generation shortfall; the country’s grid has long struggled to reliably deliver even a fraction of its roughly 200 million people’s power needs, but embedded projects like this one are typically sized to match the specific demand of a commercial cluster rather than to serve the wider grid.
Businesses operating in Victoria Island can now register interest in connecting to the network. Elektron did not disclose a commissioning date or pricing structure for customers at Thursday’s event, though the company said further details would follow as the plant moves toward full operation.
The project adds to a wave of embedded and captive power schemes taking shape across Lagos and other Nigerian commercial hubs, as private developers and state regulators try to route around the chronic unreliability of the national grid, one deal at a time, one district at a time.
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