SOLshare, the initiator of the world’s first peer-to-peer energy exchange network for rural communities, in collaboration with Shakti Foundation, is set to break another glass ceiling in energy innovation.

Funded by the UK Government, SOLshare and Shakti Foundation will be interconnecting one of their P2P solar microgrids - a network of interconnected solar home systems, in a rural village in Bangladesh through a single point called the Point of Common Coupling (PCC), to feed the excess solar energy into the national grid.

Dr Tawfiq-e-Elahi Chowdhury, Advisor to the Prime Minister for Power, Energy & Mineral Resources Affairs inaugurated the PCC on Tuesday at SOLshare’s offices in the city.

He was joined by acting British High Commissioner to Bangladesh Javed Patel as special guest.

Dr Chowdhury congratulated SOLshare and Shakti Foundation for the timely innovation in the power system saying “Hopefully, today’s event will lead to the scale up of this idea so that the benefits of solar peer-to-peer microgrids would reach more customers.”

He assured government support for this enterprise, according to British High Commission in Dhaka.

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Javed Patel said they are delighted to support this ground-breaking pilot programme that builds on Bangladesh’s global success in solar home systems and national grid expansion. 

"It has the potential to bring benefits to many remote rural communities as well as increase the contribution of renewable energy in the national energy mix,” he said.

The PCC (Point of Common Coupling) integrates Bangladesh’s two major electrification efforts- grid extension and Solar Home System dissemination.

The Rural Electrification Board (REB) grid is connected to one side of the PCC, while the local microgrid from the SHS is connected to the other side.

The microgrid is self-sustaining and this grid infrastructure will be used for energy balancing with the national grid, while reducing load shedding, and increasing service stability.

Users of the Solar Home Systems (SHS) are able to sell electricity to the national grid to earn an additional income while paving the path to sustainability for our existing 6 million+ SHS.

This is the first step towards the formation of a smarter grid with the integration of existing distributed storage assets ultimately providing the means for the formation of a virtual power plant (VPP). 

“We believe this will be a game-changer in climate change mitigation measures and will help realize the country’s aspiration of generating 40% power from clean energy sources by 2041”, said Imran Ahmed, Deputy Executive Director of Shakti foundation.

“Having reached full electrification is a major achievement for Bangladesh. Today this is starting with solar home systems, tomorrow it will continue with local electric three-wheeler (B-Tesla) batteries”, commented Dr. Sebastian Groh, co-founder and managing director of SOLshare.