Move to promote fund for solar home system
UNB, Dhaka :
The existing pre-requisite to qualify for a new solar power connection – a pre-installed solar panel – is set to be removed. Consumers will pay a replacement one-off fee worth Tk 2000 per kilowatt to avail a solar power connection, a burgeoning segment in Bangladesh that is the envy of the world.
The revenue earned from the one-off fee will be channelled into the renewable energy development fund set up at the newly-created Sustainable and Renewable Energy Development Authority (Sreda).
Sreda has been created to extend solar power systems and coverage in off-grid areas. According to a recent World Bank report, Bangladesh has the world’s fastest-growing market in solar panels, but there is still tremendous potential to be filled.
IDCOL, the state-owned non-bank financial institution, has now set a target to finance six million such systems by 2017.
Power Division on Sunday took the new decision canceling the existing provision introduced in 2010, that made pre-installed rooftop solar panels necessary to qualify for a connection.
For industrial and commercial consumers, the solar panels had to cover a greater proportion of the building’s total electricity load.
Yesterday’s decision was made at a meeting at Power Division with State Minister for Power and Energy Nasrul Hamid in the chair. It came following a clearance by the finance ministry of the new rule for paying Tk 2000 per kilowatt to the Sreda.
Official sources said the decision was the culmination of a long period of persuasion by the real estate developers, who have always opposed the rooftop provision.
Once one of their own, Nasrul Hamid – a former president of Rehab, the association of real estate developers – got the state minister’s job at the Energy Ministry, the current Rehab leadership met him and placed a demand to cancel the provision.
The existing pre-requisite to qualify for a new solar power connection – a pre-installed solar panel – is set to be removed. Consumers will pay a replacement one-off fee worth Tk 2000 per kilowatt to avail a solar power connection, a burgeoning segment in Bangladesh that is the envy of the world.
The revenue earned from the one-off fee will be channelled into the renewable energy development fund set up at the newly-created Sustainable and Renewable Energy Development Authority (Sreda).
Sreda has been created to extend solar power systems and coverage in off-grid areas. According to a recent World Bank report, Bangladesh has the world’s fastest-growing market in solar panels, but there is still tremendous potential to be filled.
IDCOL, the state-owned non-bank financial institution, has now set a target to finance six million such systems by 2017.
Power Division on Sunday took the new decision canceling the existing provision introduced in 2010, that made pre-installed rooftop solar panels necessary to qualify for a connection.
For industrial and commercial consumers, the solar panels had to cover a greater proportion of the building’s total electricity load.
Yesterday’s decision was made at a meeting at Power Division with State Minister for Power and Energy Nasrul Hamid in the chair. It came following a clearance by the finance ministry of the new rule for paying Tk 2000 per kilowatt to the Sreda.
Official sources said the decision was the culmination of a long period of persuasion by the real estate developers, who have always opposed the rooftop provision.
Once one of their own, Nasrul Hamid – a former president of Rehab, the association of real estate developers – got the state minister’s job at the Energy Ministry, the current Rehab leadership met him and placed a demand to cancel the provision.
