1. Assessment of present status of LPG systems and its market potential in Bangladesh

Biogas Plants :

An agriculture based country like Bangladesh has huge potentials for utilizing biogas technologies. According to an estimate "29.7 billion m³ of biogas can be obtained from the livestock of the country which is equivalent to 1.5 million tons of kerosene (which is the principal fuel in the rural areas). Apart from this, it is also possible to get biogas from human excreta, poultry dropping, waste, marine plants etc. If each family of Bangladesh can be associated with a biogas plant, then only human excreta will give about 10 billion cubic m³ biogas". According to IFRD - there is potential of about four million biogas plants in Bangladesh.

To supplement the protein deficiency “Poultry farming” has become one of the emerging industries in the country. It’s demand and need is increasing day by day. At present there are 100,000 Poultry Farms in the country. According to an estimate – if 1 kW of biogas-based electricity generator is installed in each poultry farm, then the aggregate electricity generation capacity from all the poultry farms will be about 100 MW. If all the poultry farm can meet their own electricity generation through their own biogas-based electricity generator, the country will be able to save about 100 million $ investment cost to install new power plant and also avoid recurring fuel and other O&M costs.

Solar Photovoltaic :

There is no resource constraint for application of solar photovoltaic as solar energy resource is abundant throughout the country. According to a World Bank funded market survey, there is an existing market size of 0.5 million households for Solar Home Systems (SHS) on a fee-for-service basis in the off-grid areas of Bangladesh. This assessment is based on current expenditure levels on fuel for lighting and battery charging being substituted by SHS [World Bank, 1998]. Also it has been observed that in most developing countries, households typically spend not more than 5% of their income on lighting and use of small appliances. By this measure, about 4.8 million rural Bangladeshi households could pay for a solar home system [World Bank, 1998]. At present the national grid is serving only 50% of the nearly 10,000 rural markets and commercial centres in the country which are excellent market for centralized solar photovoltaic plants. Currently private diesel genset operators are serving in most of the off-grid rural markets and it has been found that 82% of them are also interested in marketing SHS in surrounding areas if some sorts of favorable financing arrangements are available [World Bank, 2000].

Throughout the country, different government administrative offices, NGO offices, Health Centres, Schools, banks, police stations etc are functioning. In the off-grid locations, these offices are either using traditional means (lantern, candles, kerosene wick lamps etc.) or operating their own diesel gensets. These offices have separate budgets for electricity and they can be easily served with different solar photovoltaic applications.

Wind, Small Hydro, Tidal and Others :

Market Survey for wind, small-hydro, modern biomass or other types of RET applications are not yet been done properly in the country. From the previous resource potential estimations it can be implied that –

• Small Wind Turbines can be installed in the coastal region and off-shore islands of the country.

• Micro Hydro power plants can be installed in the north-eastern hilly regions and in the existing irrigational canal system with sufficient head.

• There are scopes of integrated tidal power plants in the coastal regions.

 Improved Cook stove(ICS) Programme