Bangladesh looking to add solar power in national grid

Entrepreneurs in Bangladesh want solar power to be included in the national grid to utilize nearly 200 mw capacity solar plants that are underutilised.

Some solar systems having mechanisms to be linked to the grid system were installed in households under a new government policy nearly a year ago.

“The systems with ‘on grid solar inverters’ are capable of providing the power to the grid system but these plants remained underutilised as they are used only during the load shedding (power rationing) period,” said an entrepreneur.

Siddiqur Rahman, CEO of Power4u, suggested the small solar systems to provide electricity to the grid directly instead of the households while they could offer the off grid service at households during the load shedding.

“The subscribers will pay their power bills as usual under the traditional billing system deducting their charges for providing (selling) electricity to the grid eventually it will cut subscribers power bills and help government offer smoother services,” he said.

The chief sales executive of the Zever Solar Co. of China, a leading Chinese solar system producer, Lester Ni, said that on grid solar inverters were being widely used in developed countries like Australia, Britain, Germany, France and Italy because of their environment friendliness of the devices.

“The devise (inverter) does not need support of harmful battery to supply power to the users from solar panels. As it remains connected with the power grid, it can inject surplus power into the grid through meeting the demand of an individual user,” explained Lester Ni, chief sales executive of the Zever Solar Co. of China.

The use of ‘On grid solar inverter’, he said, can help an energy-starve country like Bangladesh enormously in minimizing power crisis as this modern system can feed surplus power of a solar system to the main power grid.
‘On grid solar inverter’ is environment friendly, cost- effective and helpful for reducing load shedding because the device dose not need harmful battery to support supplying of electricity from the solar panel, he claimed.

“Installation of this device helps users save power bills as it can feed surplus power of a user to the power grid,” said Siddiqur Rahman.