Nigeria is a country blessed with abundant sources of energy. The choice of energy for electricity generation in an area has always been influenced by political motives that the proper choice of energy type and the economic advantages are not considered. Due to these wrong foundations the stable power supply has been seen in Nigeria as an impossible target. The paper therefore is aimed at considering the available sources of energy in Nigeria and to suggest the best energy mix that will make this dream a reality. For this reason studies were carried out in some parts of the world as regards to: (i) The sources of energy available, (ii) The energy mix, (iii) The generating sources and the available energy. From the study it was seen that Nigeria primary energy resources are in excess of its domestic electric energy requirements that it should not experience electricity supply inadequacies. One of the solutions to adequate and stable power supply is to have a proper energy mix with proper load projection and good management system.

In this paper, we present an open-source software tool 'ABC-PLOSS', which is developed for use in optimisation processes. Path-loss optimisation deals with searching for the best set of operator-specific parameters in telecommunication that gives the least cost of operation. It is a primary issue that challenges mobile communication operators, particularly the global system mobile (GSM) operators in tuning mobile-base station networks for efficient and reliable operation. The tool uses a sequential processor architecture based on a swarm intelligence algorithm called artificial bee colony (ABC) and the cost-231 Hata path-loss model as cost function for path-loss minimisation (PLM). Using the ABC-PLOSS framework, the ABC algorithm is compared with two other existing and popular artificial intelligent (AI) algorithms called the genetic algorithm (GA) and particle swarm optimisation (PSO). Results of simulation studies show that this tool is indeed useful as it gives a competitive or lower path-loss estimate when compared with conventional techniques. It also shows that it is possible for the ABC to attain an estimated seven-fold and twofold path-loss improvement over the GA and the PSO techniques respectively.

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