Bangladesh aims to be world’s ‘first solar nation’

DHAKA, Jan. 26 (NsNewsWire) — Bangladesh (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Residents of Islampur, a remote village in the northern Bangladeshi district of Naogaon, were stunned one night last summer when the darkness was suddenly illuminated by electric lights coming from a village home.

Why the surprise? The community has no connection to the country’s power grid, reports Reuters.

The owner of the house, Rafiqul Islam, is one of around 15 million Bangladeshis whose homes are now powered by solar home systems, or SHS, under a government scheme to provide clean power to communities with no access to grid electricity.

The Bangladeshi government aims to provide electricity to all of the country’s households by 2021. With financial assistance from the World Bank and other development partners, it plans to generate 220 megawatts of electricity for around 6 million households by 2017 through the solar home system programme.

Each solar home system uses a solar panel installed on the roof of an individual home. A 250 watt panel can produce up to 1 kilowatt of power a day.