Three more solar power plants in private sector are under process to get the approval from Bangladesh government.

According to official sources, the solar power plants are 100 MW power plant at Banshkhali in Chattogram, 300 MW at Islampur in Jamalpur and 100 MW at Sadar Upazila in Rajbari district.

The Consortium of Huiheng Wind Power Limited of Hong Kong and Jupiter Energy Ltd., of Bangladesh will develop the 100 MW Banshkhali plant while SAL-GTECH Consortium will set up the 300 MW Islampur plant and Consortium of Sungrow Renewable Energy Investment Pte. Ltd. and Theia Power (Singapore) Pte. Ltd., will set up the 100 MW Rajbari power plant.

Official sources said the Power Division has already moved three separate proposals to the Cabinet Division to place the offer of the three consortiums to the meeting of the Cabinet Committee on Government Purchase (CCGP) for final approval of the government.

‘If the CCGP approves the proposals, the Power Division will ask the Bangladesh Power Development Board (BPDB) to sign power purchase agreement with them,’ a top official of the Power Division said.

He, however, did not disclose the detail tariff rate of the solar power from these plants, but said the BPDB will buy electricity from the plants under long term contract with a tariff rate of about 10 US cents.

In recent months, the government has been emphasising increasing the share of renewable energy, specially, solar power for power generation as part of its plan to raise its share to 40 percent by 2041 from the existing below 3 percent.

State Minister for Power, Energy and Mineral Resources Nasrul Hamid has recently said that despite several odds Bangladesh will generate 40 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2041.

He reiterated the country’s target at Ministerial-level Multi-Stakeholder Roundtable on ‘Implementation of COP28 Decisions in the Energy Sector – Opportunities, Constraints, and Next Steps: The Way Head’ in the Berlin Energy Transition Dialogue 2024 on March 20.

Currently, as per statistics of Sustainable and Renewable Energy Development Authority (SREDA), so far about 989.61 MW of solar power plants were set up across the country of which 371.48 MW is off-grid and remaining 618.13 is on-grid while the country’s on-grid total power generation capacity is more than 25,000 MW and off-grid power generation capacity is another 5000 MW.

The Power Division’s official documents show that in the last 3 years the government approved proposals for setting up of about 13 solar and wind power plants having total capacity of 609 MW by 2025.

‘Letter of intent (LOI) and notification of award (LOI) were issued to the private sponsors of these renewable energy projects,’said a top official referring to the documents.

He said of these projects, two are wind power projects having (30+70) 100 MW and remaining 11 are solar power projects.