Solar Cells Info

Enayet Rasul, Jan 17, 2007
Editorial, Financial Express
http://www.financialexpress-bd.com/index3.asp?cnd=1/17/2007&section_id=5&newsid=49648&spcl=no

THE major urban centres in Bangladesh are all supplied by conventional electricity supplied from the national grid. The rural areas where electricity is being provided, also depend considerably on supplies from the national grid. But the urban areas get top priority in such supply. Therefore, in the present conditions of power insufficiency, the authorities are supplying the bulk of the inadequately produced electricity to urban centres leaving the rural areas grossly undersupplied.

This situation would not arise if the rural areas became gradually self sufficient in producing electricity on their own and their best option in this regard would be solar power. A report in this paper sometime ago described how 50, 000 people in the rural areas of Natore were benefited from the use of solar power. Apart from the non-dependability of adequate supply from the national grid, there are many rural areas where it would take no one knows how long for power from the national grid to reach. This is because of vast resources that would have to be mobilised for setting up infrastructures for transmitting conventional electricity to these areas. For such places, therefore, off-grid power or solar power remains the best option. Even a medium sized power plant requires a great deal of investments and takes years to be set up and made operational. But a house in a remote part of Bangladesh can have its needs of electricity met instantly from a single solar panel set up on its roof top.
Access to electricity in Bangladesh is one of the lowest in the world. The coverage at present stands around 30 per cent of the total population. The rural areas of Bangladesh, where nearly 80 per cent of the population live, are seriously deprived of electricity. As the conventional national grid-fed electricity can only cover 15 per cent of the total households, tapping different sources of alternative energy can be used for the benefit of the people.

The government in its national energy policy clarified its vision that it wants to bring the whole country under electricity supply by the year 2020. But major extension of electricity supply through grid expansion is not a viable option for most parts of Bangladesh in the foreseeable future mainly due to inaccessibility . There are many areas in the country where electricity from the national grid will not reach in the next 30 years. Some experts say that at the current rate of conventional electrification, it will take decades to provide access to electricity to all people in the country. In contrast, favourable natural conditions like sufficient sunshine and wind-speed exist for production of electricity from the sun’s ray’s and the wind on a regular basis throughout rural Bangladesh. To fulfill the vision of universal electrification, these alternative energy sources will have to take a vital role for off-grid electricity generation.
Of all the non-conventional options, solar electricity has so far been considered the most easy and viable one. Solar energy’s attributes of needing no fuel, high durability and reliability and being able to operate for prolonged periods without maintenance, make it economical for all types of remote applications. Different private business houses have started introducing solar photovoltaic systems in rural areas.
According to a report, Infrastructure Development Company Ltd (IDCOL) brought more than 80,000 rural households under the solar power system, far from the power grid, from January 2003 until now. Other entrepreneurs need to be encouraged towards producing solar electricity for a wider impact.
The USAID has worked for years to bring electricity to rural Bangladesh. The range of households with electricity has significantly expanded, and the customer base of more than 30 million continues to increase. But only a quarter of families living in the countryside have electricity. Despite investments in rural electric cooperatives, it is too impractical and costly to extend the power grid to certain isolated areas. Solar power, on the other hand, is a practical and environmentally friendly way to bring electricity and a better quality of life to those who live in remote areas. In 1996, the organization Grameen Shakti began supplying solar power to rural areas, — an effort that grew slowly until 2000 when the USAID, recognizing the potential impact of investment, began supporting the initiative. Since then, the project has truly taken off. More than 42,000 household solar power systems have been supplied and installed since 1996, and Grameen Shakti plans to have a million units in operation by 2007.
Bangladesh has a large unsatisfied demand for energy, which is growing by 10 per cent annually. Currently, it has the lowest per capita consumption of commercial energy in South Asia. At best, only 4,300 mw of conventional electricity is available at any given time out of capacities for some 5,275 mw that have been set up. As a result, the country has been unable to meet the demand for electricity. All parts of the country, including the capital, Dhaka, experience frequent planned electricity outages. Facilitating the production of solar electricity can go a long way, fairly soon, in substantially improving the per capita consumption of electricity in Bangladesh at an early date. The same will also immensely reduce the pressure on the national grid.