Community based Micro Off-Grid Power System using Renewable Energy Technology (RET): Investment Analysis, Cost Benefit and Main Factors
Bangladesh is the eighth populous country in the world with the highest population density and a vast majority of its population, who are living in villages and small towns, are deprived of power. Recently some steps are being taken by the Government of Bangladesh (GoB) to bring those people under electrification who are in remote inaccessible unelectrified area where grid expansion is expensive and it is being done by encouraging them to use renewable energy such as: Solar photovoltaic, Solar thermal power, Wind power, Biogas, Mini- Hydro etc for electricity generation in stand-alone system. But the high installation and maintenance cost of these renewable energy based power generation in standalone system are becoming the main hindrances to the village people to afford it. Though some financial helps are provided from government and some NGOs, but those are not enough and only a few people get these privileges. That’s why the potentiality of renewable energy couldn’t be used in an effective way. The objective of this paper is to present an alternative and – from our point of view – more realistic aspect of using renewable energy effectively in the reliable energy supply. This paper will discuss about an idea of cost effective community based micro off-grid power system which will emphasize on using Renewable Energy Technologies (RETs) like utilizing Biogas for power generation. Furthermore, this paper will also visualize as to how this micro off-grid system can be implemented in those villages and small towns which are currently detached from electricity and it can be done by dividing each village or town into small communities and bringing them under electrification. Many factors, such as technology costs and investment analysis, benefit-cost ratio, payback period and available potentials have been incorporated in order to fulfill this task.
