Abstract
Nigeria is endowed with cheap energy and other natural resources, and it should supply electricity to the significant ilk of its population, but that is not the case. The country generates about 13,000MW peak and transmission capacity of 7,000MW. However, the average power generation is less than 4,500MW even though the total installed capacity is over 13,000MW. Furthermore, the energy supply is epileptic, which creates the need for Nigeria's rural electrification, which still needs urgent and close attention as it relies on renewable energy systems; the study obtained results from exploring open-sourced software RAMP, a stochastic simulator of rural areas energy demand load curves, and MicroGridsPy, a linear programming off-grid energy system optimisation model. The load curve from RAMP shows the community's load distribution, with a high peak between 4 – 7 am, 12 – 1 pm, and 5 – 8 pm due to daily activities. The four model scenarios from MicroGridsPy show an optimum result in scenario four, which is the on-grid capacity expansion with the net present cost (NPC) of 419.37 kUSD, the total investment cost (TIC) of 197.93 kUSD, and the levelized cost of energy (LCOE) of 0.1142 USD/kWh.