Design of Mini-Grid for Solar Home Systems with NPV in Bangladesh

With the trend of global dependency on fossil fuel, Bangladesh is not different from other nations, depending mostly on fossil fuels for power generation. However, Government of Bangladesh had plans to achieve 10% energy from renewables but fell short at around 3.68%. Solar, being the pivotal player in the renewable mix of Bangladesh, portrays huge potential in forthcoming future by holding 75% share in current renewable mix. The largest portion in Bangladesh's Solar capacity comes from SHS (Solar Home Systems). Starting in 2003, the SHS program saw its peak in 2013 and then suffered a sharp downfall. Due to the recent massive grid electrification by Bangladesh Rural Electrification board (BREB), SHS number is not likely to grow. On the arrival of Grid, current SHS users may discard their PV panels, owing to high SHS cost. Therefore, an insightful solution is proposed to form a Mini-Grid by integrating SHSs and connecting it to national grid through net metering of Photovoltaics (NPV) to reduce the cost. The optimal solution rendered by HOMER modelling & simulation for a 200 SHS household locality was a 20 kW PV-based grid-tied system. The LCOE for proposed system was Tk.2.52/kWh, which was 35.55% lower than the current grid electricity price.