Welbeck Electricity is the main contractor for Nigeria’s leading telecom company, MTN Nigeria PLC. Welbeck came to Aggreko looking for a new power solution for MTN’s Lagos data centre as they were having too many outages and costs were getting consistently higher.

MTN had been primarily reliant on a combination of grid power and diesel generators. However, with the grid being so unreliable in the region, the cost of using the generators was spiralling and the need to find a cheaper and more stable alternative to protect the efficiency of their operations was paramount.

This was our first project together and was an exciting venture for Aggreko in Nigeria as it reinforced the strategy to join forces with more Independent Power Producers (IPPs), with Welbeck bringing their opportunity to the table, we were able to offer the solution.

In this case the end user was MTN Nigeria PLC - the largest telecommunications company in Nigeria. Due to the scale of company and the amount of data that is exchanged daily, they have one of the largest data centres in Lagos which ultimately controls all MTN’s traffic across West Africa.

Previously the data centre had been on the grid which had been unreliable, so unreliable that 95% of the time, power was from a temporary diesel generator on site.

Because of the frequency of use, operating cost for the diesel generators was high. Welbeck wanted to eradicate unreliable grid power stopping high operating cost on their overheads - they contacted Aggreko to develop a cost-effective power solution.