Up to 15 hours of power cut a day significantly hamper the social and economic development in Bangladesh and are the result of a gap of about 1800mW in the power production. This is the situation of Bangladesh’s electricity grid - and these statistics only describe the already electrified part of the country and thus for 40% of the population. More than 80 million people in Bangladesh so far have no access to modern forms of energy at all and there is almost no scope for many of them to get connected in years to come. The sheer growth in demand of about 500MW worsens the prospects for a reliable energy supply in the future and poses a major challenge for the energy sector.
In 2004 it was decided to support Bangladesh in tackling this threat and the GIZ - PURE project took up the challenge to improve the energy situation and living conditions for rural population of Bangladesh. These efforts have been continued until today by the SED project team and funding from Energising Development.
Up to today, SED in close cooperation with KfW, World Bank, IDB, ADB and GEF and together with the local Partner IDCOL have supported the dissemination and installation of more than 1.000.000 Solar Home Systems between 10Wp and 130Wp with an average of approximately 50Wp each. That’s a total of over 50MW installed capacity and 70-80GWh of usable energy for around 5.000.000 people in off-grid areas every year! Nowadays local businesses sell, install and service around 35.000 Systems and thus sustainably provide another +1.75MW installed capacity every month, indicating the establishment of a healthy market for standalone solar systems.
The course is set and GIZ – SED now does not intend to further subsidize the sector of Solar home Systems. It will turn out over the next years, whether the goal of a sustainable market for high-quality solar systems has been achieved.
Still a shortage of work is not to be expected. While the Solar Home Systems market will still be observed to make sure that it lasts, the large scale introduction of high quality solar lamps will be the next major challenge to make modern, improved lighting appliances available and affordable for poor rural households. With panels of around 3Wp, these systems will cover the basic energy needs for lighting and charging mobile phones in a household. A successful and fast start-up of the dissemination is expected, since a sales infrastructure of more than 2000 shops that sell solar appliances has already been established by the Solar Home System vendors.
Besides these developments and a visibly increasing acceptance of solar systems, the SED Team is also happy to announce that 1.500 Biogas plants have been constructed with support of the project. Also 35 efficient rice parboiling systems have been built, and are the beginning of many more to come. Additionally more than 350.000 efficient wood fuel stoves have been disseminated in rural households.
Template:Wl-publish: 2011-08-11 06:29:40 +0200
