Harness solar power for income generation

Participants in a high-level policy dialogue on smart energy for a smart Bangladesh called for devising innovative strategies to harness the potential of 6.0 million existing solar panels for income-generating activities through supportive policies and regulatory frameworks.
They said that the solar home systems -- a significant portion of which remain underutilised -- could make valuable contributions to the national grid through creative approaches and by enhancing the bankability of these systems.
The dialogue shared the success story of a project that enabled the sale of 1800 kWp of electricity generated from a solar system to the national grid. The project supplied excess energy from a community where a point of common coupling was established.
In collaboration with the British High Commission in Dhaka, Shakti Foundation and SOLshare organised the programme in the city on Wednesday.
The project discovered that during power outages, the community was unable to sell their surplus energy due to the alternating current (AC) grid's limited availability, operating only 53 per cent of the time.
To address this hurdle, Shakti Foundation and SOLshare developed a solution to ensure that the community's 40 per cent excess energy could be sold to the national grid even when the grid was down.
The dialogue, titled 'Connecting Distributed Solar & Storage to the National Grid for Improved Livelihoods and National Grid Resilience', was attended by Special Envoy to the Prime Minister for Climate Change Saber Hossain Chowdhury, Chairperson of Parliamentary Standing Committee on Power, Energy and Mineral Resources Division Waseqa Ayesha Khan and British High Commissioner to Bangladesh Sarah Cooke.
Moderated by SOLshare Managing Director Dr Sebastian Groh and Shakti Foundation Deputy Executive Director Imran Ahmed, the event featured insights from representatives of government and non-government organisations working in the renewable energy and financial sectors.
These included Zahirul Alam, executive director of Integrated Development Foundation, Dr Rezawan Khan, Alam Mandal of Bangladesh Advancing Development and Growth through Energy (BADGE) and Tahmina S Zaman of Mutual Trust Bank.
SOLshare Managing Director Dr Sebastian Groh presented data from 106 solar microgrids across Bangladesh spanning two and a half years, highlighting the substantial additional energy sales generated through these systems.
This data underscored the need for policy measures that facilitate the integration of solar microgrids into the national electricity grid.
He proposed a flat Tk 20 per kWh tariff as a well-founded minimum remuneration for microgrid energy producers.
This tariff, he argued, takes into account the panel costs, feed-in potential and contingency on solar panel sizes, weather conditions and national grid outage frequency.
Mr Sebastian also said that with a total of 16 megawatt-hour annual solar feed-in capacity across 85 microgrids ready to sell electricity to the national grid, implementing the Bangabandhu Tariff could serve a multitude of beneficial purposes. Chairman of the Parliamentary Standing Committee Waseqa Ayesha Khan emphasised thinking "outside the box" to identify options that maximise co-benefits in terms of health, employment and income generation while also monitoring technical advancements.
Special Envoy Saber Hossain Chowdhury referred to the government's four pillars for a smart Bangladesh: smart citizen, smart society, smart government and smart public representatives.

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