Evolution of the solar-home-system (SHS) in rural Bangladesh via empowering an underprivileged school – a pilot project

There has been a very common scenario in almost every rural state of Bangladesh regarding aspects of electrification, empowerment and digitisation. Prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, the population growth rate in Bangladesh was up to approximately 8% and is one of the most densely populated countries in the world, but with insufficient electricity production capacity. Over 6 million, mainly DC-Solar Home Systems (SHS) have been deployed since 2003, which was the largest national program in the world for off-grid electrification. However, as a “modern developing country”, as of 2022 under a different program, the Bangladesh National Grid swiftly reached 100% of the country, rendering most of these DC-SHS redundant. A solution has been designed to help the rural areas connect to electricity and digital platforms at a very economical and sustainable way, whilst upgrading the design to AC to cater to grid integration. A pilot low-capacity (750Wp) hybrid SHS was designed and setup in a rural, underprivileged school. The practical outputs of this project were evaluated in terms of technical, environmental, social, financial, and educational dimensions, while also providing essential insights into the adoption of such a system. The results have been overwhelmingly positive, with the solar fraction, i.e., the effectiveness of the SHS, found to be 97.3% in the first month, amongst other socioeconomic benefits. With a majority of the DC-SHS ranging from 50-150W, an effective solution could be to combine the PV panels from those existing and unused systems to make up at least 300W. At this wattage, they could be converted to AC via accessible solar inverters with acceptable conversion efficiency and hence be grid connected. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), SDG7: Affordable and Clean Energy and SDG4: Quality Education have also been inherently achieved. Finally, this solution can cater to any rural area in any country that is expanding its national grid, which can subsequently impact millions of households and institutions.