The paper looks into the possibilities of using available renewable resources in rural areas for electric power generation for remote consumers. Based on meteorological data (the hourly wind speed) collected and analyzed for Dapchi, a north eastern rural settlement of Nigeria, coupled with hydrological data of River Kamadougu Gena, the hourly power produced from a hybrid power system comprising of wind and small hydro power systems is evaluated and considered as a supply source to electrical loads of the settlement.

Solid-State Transformer (SST), a power electronics based transformer is an emerging technology in electric power system. The transformer is being investigated to completely replace existing Line/Low Frequency Transformer (LFT). SST is composed of either of the two topologies: AC-DC-AC, two steps approach; or AC-AC, single-step approach. The two steps approach consists of three stages: AC-DC; DC-DC; and DC-AC stages. The DC-DC stage is made up of a boost DC-DC converter, a DC-AC inverter and a High Frequency Transformer, HFT. Therefore, SST performs the tasks of LFT by means of power electronic converters and HFT.  The main essence of SST is to provide solution to the problem of bulkiness and heaviness of the LFT in the power distribution network. This is with the view to providing reduction in construction cost, cost of maintenance and transportation. The power electronics transformer provides numerous advantages which are grouped into: The transformer has high power density; it functions in blackouts and brownouts; and it provides easy means of distributed renewable energy integration into associated grid. Therefore, this paper provides a glance into the technology of the SST for its better understating and promotion of research activities in the area.

The paper is aimed at analysing the environmental factors on the outage rates of the overhead distribution feeders. This was facilitated using daily outage data on the six 33kV feeders of the Zaria distribution system collected from the Zaria Transmission substation of the Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) for twelve months. Outage models were developed from where power losses due to the feeder outages were obtained. Frequent and delayed forced outages occur during the rainy season, the peak being in August and during harmattan, especially in October. There were relatively high outage rates during the hot season, the maximum occurring in May. Feeders 2, 3 and 6 were most frequently on forced outages. The causes of the high outage rates are attributable to damages done to the overhead lines due to heavy winds, thunder strikes and other disturbances associated with rain. Other reasons include animal-caused outages, increase in the simultaneous use of weather sensitive devices, trees and vehicular accidents. As a result, energy loss was found to be 2947.62GWh, which translates to high revenue loss if the entire nation is considered. The forced outage rates are mapped to external environmental factors while the scheduled outages are due to the intrinsic factors. The paper proposes recommendations for minimizing the outage rates and hence improving the performance of the feeders.

Manufacturers usually specify photovoltaic (PV) modules at standard test conditions of and , which may not be attainable anywhere in the world. Therefore, to determine the performance of PV modules at naturally occurring irradiance and ambient temperature, this paper proposes a theoretical methodology. This method could be used to predict the performance of PV modules given the irradiance and the ambient temperature at the site of installation. A novel technique that is based on the current-voltage characteristic model is used, it accounts for the variability in the environmental parameters. The irradiance and the ambient temperature of Zaria, Nigeria were used as an illustrative example, which showed the effects of the environmental conditions on the performance of PV modules.