Off-grid Rural Area Electrification by Solar-Diesel Hybrid Mini-grid in Bangladesh: Design Considerations

Off-grid Rural Area Electrification by Solar-Diesel Hybrid Mini-grid in Bangladesh: Design Considerations

Presenters: Shahriar Ahmed Chowdury, (Center for Energy Research, United International University)

Overview

Bangladesh is experiencing the most successful solar home system based rural electrification program. So far the program has installed more than 3 million SHS in rural areas of Bangladesh. The SHS can provide electricity to rural areas for 4 to 5 hours to operate basic loads like lighting, mobile phone charging, B/W TV etc. The SHS can hardly contribute to productive commercial activities in rural off grid areas. In the rural areas loads are sparsely distributed and demand of energy is at a barely minimum. So, it is not economically viable to extend the national grid to the remote off grid areas. Also in the island areas the grid extension is not economically feasible. Electricity access in rural Bangladesh is less than 40%. It is the common tendency of the rural people to live in clustered households. These paved the options for electrification of off grid areas with small standalone solar PV mini-grids, considering that Bangladesh has moderate solar insolation. One of the challenges of developing mini-grids is the storage system management. Incorporation of a small diesel generator not only reduces the requirement of storage system but can also provide energy in low insolation days, thus reduces the requirement of autonomy days. This paper highlights the technical design consideration for developing solar-diesel hybrid mini-grids in off grid rural areas of Bangladesh.