Remove obstacles in regenerating electricity from the Khulna Solar power plant
It is unfortunate that the country’s first large solar power plant, located in Khulna’s Sonadanga Solar Park, has been idle for a decade.
This incident has once again proven the neglect of our state policymakers towards renewable energy. According to national newspaper report, the power plant was shut down in 2012 due to lack of maintenance, and the people of the area and other parts of the country had to suffer from load shedding for several hours a day due to the power crisis.
Yet, the then government had focused on fossil fuels, which are harmful to the environment and are imported at the cost of hard-earned foreign exchange.
The report mentioned that the plant has remained inactive to this day, and load shedding has become a regular occurrence in the country, especially during the acute energy crisis.
It is worth noting that if the solar panels of the centre can be made operational, it is possible to light the entire Sonadanga residential area and six major roads like KDA Avenue with the 16 kilowatts of electricity from the solar power plant. It is also possible to generate 16 kilowatts of electricity by spending only Tk12-15 lakh.
Meanwhile, Khulna City Corporation (KCC) has informed that in 2007, the solar power plant was established on the land provided by the corporation with the help of a donor organization at the initiative of the then professor of the University of Bremen in Germany, Dr. Bibhuti Roy, a son of Khulna.
According to the project director, who is now retired, when the training centre of the solar project was completed in 2008, 222 solar modules with a capacity of 20 kilowatts of electricity were installed on the roof of the centre, covering an area of 4,000 square feet. At that time, 150-160 units of electricity were generated daily. Moreover, after the solar lights in the park were used in the training centre, the remaining electricity was added to the national grid.
The power generation plant was remained shut down in 2012 due to lack of supervision and renovation. No matter how valuable and important it may be the carelessness and neglect of our policymakers towards anything that is obtained almost without investment and effortlessly is well known. The imprint of this harmful trend is clear and cannot be denied in the case under discussion.
