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Solar power as a prime energy source in Bangladesh?

Shabbir A. Bashar
THE Daily Star reported on December 14, 2009 that a company has been tasked with setting up a 20-25kW solar power supply to Bangladesh Bank at acostofTk.1 Crore. I question the wisdom of this investment based on current energy costs in the market and the life expectancy of such a system.
Energy Bangla,
(www.EnergyBangla.com) reports that the cost of electrical energy to the con-
sumer is Tk.5.50 per kilowatt-hour. If we assume that banks operate 8 hrs/day, 5 days/week, 48 weeks/year, their annual electricity bill for 22.5 kilowatts comes to Tk. 2,37,600. Dividing Tk.l Crore by this figure gives us the number of years it will take for it to pay for itself: 42 years. The payback will be even longer if maintenance and other operational costs are taken into account. The GreenEcon website (www.Greenecon.net) -- dedicated to understanding the economics of alternative energies -- is a good starting ooint for vour readers to verify my
claims.
A 2002 study by R. Khan et al of BUET found the daily sunlight hours in Bangladesh to range from 10 to 7 hours; they further reduced this by 54% (to 4.6 hours) to account for rainfall, cloud, fog and dust over the solar panels; in the US, located a further 20 degrees north of the equator, the peak sunlight hour is 3.5. 10% efficiency is further lost during the necessary DC to AC conversion, reducing the median 22.5kW capacity to 20kW.
Multiplying the 4.6 hours by 20kW, we see that this system will deliver 92kW hours/day or 33.5 MW hours/year. In its typical 20 year lifespan, the system will deliver 670MW hours of energy. Dividi ng 670MW hours by its cost of Tk 1 Crore, we getacostofTk. 15/kWhour. In comparison, energy costs are Tk.0.42/kW hour from coal; Tk.3.5/kW hour from oil and Tk.2.1 /kW hour from gas.
About 93W/sq. ft of solar energy falls on the surface of the earth. Accounting for all the conversion losses, we get lOW/so. ft. The reoorted 22.5kW system
will thus occupy 2,250 sq. ft. or a spacious apartment. An office with a air conditioner, couple of light bulbs and a computer will easily consume 1.5kW. Tk.l Crore will only serve 15 offices! The company representative boasted that up to 500MW can be produced by 2015; this will require 50 million sq. ft. or the equivalent of430 football stadiums.
What about Bangladesh 's future energy and productivity needs? The per capita energy consumption is a reasonable indicator of a country's productivity. The International Energy Agency and World Bank data for 2005 shows this to be 1230kWhr for Bangladesh. Figures for India, Thailand, UK and the US are 3,860kWhr, 14,570kWhr. 48,650kWhr and 99,620kWhr, respectively. It is obvi ous then, in order to transition from a poor agrarian developing nation to an industrialised middle-income country, Bangladesh needs to build its energy capacity ten-to-twenty times. If the future needs were to be met by solar Dower alone, this would reouire 27,400
MW panel systems. These would need a thousand square miles of space. With a current population density of almost 4000/square mile in Bangladesh, they would displace 4 million people and cost Tk.1.2 million crores -- equivalent to US$174 trillion, or 15 times the current US national debt!
A typical solar power system cost breakdown is as follows: solar panels 63%; batteries 25%; DC to AC converters 9% and 3% for installation in Bangladesh. With advances in manufacturing, the solar panel production cost will drop, while with R&D in design and material science, low-cost cell efficiency will rise above 15%. These efforts require annual investments to the tune of billions of dollars. While the US and Europe are the biggest R&D contributors, China is taking manufacturing to the next level.
But why is Bangladesh investing in a technology that costs about 7 times more than conventional energy? Why is tax money being thrown at a product whose life expectancy is half (20 years) of
the payback period (42 years)? Given Bangladesh's inability to manufacture solar panels, isn't this tantamount to wasting foreign exchange that could be better spent on upgrading the national grid transmission lines to build the much needed power distribution capacity? The local company also happens to be a supplier of the requisite batteries for which they provide a 2yr warranty; since batteries constitute 25% of cost, who will pay the additional Tk.12.5 Lakhs annu-ally?
Current technology and economics of solar power make them unsuitable for one of the most densely populated and yet one of the poorest countries of the world like Bangladesh. It is better to focus on the labour-intensive components of the solar power system to build an exportable product instead of becoming an un-witty consumer.
Shabbir A Bashar, PhD in Electrical Engineering from King’s College, University of London, has several patents to his name, and has been working in the UK and US ohotonics Industrv for over 15 vears.
***Current technology and economics of solar power make them unsuitable for one of the most densely populated and yet one of the poorest countries of the world like Bangladesh. It is better to focus on the labour-intensive components of the solar power system to build an exportable product instead of becoming an un-witty consumer.***