Increased renewable energy use 'may make a difference'

Substantial increase in renewable energy's share in the country's total power generation can play a vital role in keeping power tariff stable at the consumer level, experts believe.

The total power generation in Bangladesh now stands at 5000 MW of which renewable energy's share is less than 2 percent or about 70 MW, according to officials.

They said the government has planned to increase the share to 5 percent by 2015 with total power generation standing at 13,000-14,000 MW and 10 percent by 2020 taking the total generation to 22,000 MW.

That means, according to the officials, Bangladesh needs implementation of renewable energy projects of about 600 MW in the next 3-4 years and another 1600 MW within the consecutive five years.

But at present no such substantial move is evident to implement projects to add this huge amount of renewable energy to the national grid.

Only there is a plan to install 500 MW solar projects in public and private sectors with support from donor agencies, though there is no significant response from donor agencies.

Agreeing with the idea of promoting renewable energy, Prof M Tamim of Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology insisted the government to pursue for renewable energy instead of moving for liquid-fuel based rental power plants.

"Renewable energy is now competitive compared to the cost of power from imported liquid-fuel based plants. Comparing with coal-fired plant, it's still expensive," he said.

Tamim said per unit power production cost from liquid-fueled rental plant is now Tk 20-28 while this is lower if it is produced from solar or other renewable energy.

In Indian, the renewable energy sector is moving faster as its share in total power generation is 10 percent or 20,162 while its total power generation capacity is 186,654 MW.

With its growing electricity demand, it initiated a move to generate 1000 MW of solar power by 2013 and up to 20,000 MW grid-based solar power, 2,000 MW of off-grid solar power and cover 20 million square metres with solar energy collectors by 2020.

"When the world is concentrating fast on the development of renewable energy sector, Bangladesh remains in a poor condition," said an official wishing anonymity.

He said the fast increasing power production cost against the backdrop of quick depleting conventional energy sources has prompted many developed and developing nations to move for renewable energy.

According to him, the static production cost of renewable energy has been the main reason behind their preference for the non-conventional energy. They are now trying to contain the increase in production cost by installing renewable energy plants.

Considering the renewable energy as the sustainable future energy, now these nations took steps to popularise renewable energy that includes like solar, biomass, Wind, biofuel and geothermal power generation.

Following their moves, worldwide renewable energy capacity grew at rates of 10-60 percent annually from 2004-2009. Grid-connected photovoltaic (PV) solar power increased the fastest of all renewable technologies, with a 60 percent annual average growth rate for the five-year period, according to available statistics.

Solar photovoltaic electricity has been increasing by an average of more than 20 percent each year since 2002 and until 2010, the cumulative global photovoltaic (PV) solar surpassed 40,000 MW.

Many solar photovoltaic power stations have been built, mainly in Europe until December 2011 that includes Golmud Solar Park (China, 200 MW), Sarnia Photovoltaic Power Plant (Canada, 97 MW), Montalto di Castro Photovoltaic Power Station (Italy, 84.2 MW), Finsterwalde Solar Park (Germany, 80.7 MW), Okhotnykovo Solar Park (Ukraine, 80 MW) and Lieberose Photovoltaic Park (Germany, 71.8 MW).

However, initial investment of renewable energy is higher which is sometimes considered to be a big constraint.

To address the bottleneck, they are pursuing more research to reduce this cost. They are also adopting different strategies to increase the renewable energy's share through providing incentives to the consumers as well as to private sector renewable energy producers.

Under such a move, the USA and some European nations have already made it mandatory for power producer to produce a certain percentage of their power from renewable energy or buy it from private sector. Neighbouring India and Southeast Asian nation Indonesia has introduced the similar policies.

To follow this strategy, experts in energy sector said Bangladesh should adopt the similar strategy to keep its power tariff stable by increasing the share of renewable energy in the total power generation.