Act Daily News
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The streets of Dhaka are full of fixed clamor. Among the refrain of honking horns and ringing bells, roaring automobiles and rattling rickshaws, you may hear the electrical hum of town’s three-wheeled open taxis, referred to as tuk-tuks, as they weave by visitors.
Among the chaos, one Bangladeshi startup has noticed a chance. SOLshare plans to faucet into the nation’s estimated 2.5 million electrical tuk-tuks, and switch them right into a “virtual power plant.”
“When (the tuk-tuks) return to the garage at the end of the night, they come back with 30% juice in their batteries,” says Salma Islam, head of initiatives, fundraising and communication at SOLshare. “If they can feed that back into the grid when the demand is really high, that would be amazing.”
SOLshare is aware of precisely how a lot electrical energy is left in these tuk-tuks as a result of it has been working with native garages to improve their standard lead-acid batteries to sensible, lithium-ion batteries. These are geared up with SOLshare’s digital chip, which collects knowledge on the battery’s efficiency, location, and cost stage.
The startup claims that the leftover electrical energy in these batteries may present as much as 20% of the nation’s vitality when demand is at its highest. The automobiles would recharge in a single day when demand on the grid is lowest.
![Muhammad Delwar Hossain (right) is a tuk-tuk driver in Dhaka. He began using the smart battery one year ago.](https://media.cnn.com/api/v1/images/stellar/prod/230410115256-05-solshare-growing-bangladesh.jpg?c=16x9&q=h_720,w_1280,c_fill)
SOLshare hopes that this cellular energy provide may assist to stabilize Bangladesh’s vitality grid — and energy the nation’s financial improvement.
“The demand is constantly growing, because the population is also growing, and as people’s livelihoods get better, their energy requirements also increase,” says Islam.
SOLshare launched its EV pilot program, referred to as SOLmobility, in 2021. It partnered with 15 tuk-tuk garages to improve the batteries of round 40 automobiles and commenced gathering knowledge on the mileage and actions of the three-wheelers.
The sensible batteries use 40% much less vitality than lead-acid batteries, says Islam. Additionally, the lithium-ion batteries cost in simply six hours, round half the time of lead-acid batteries, and are lighter and extra environment friendly. Although they’re costlier, costing greater than double in comparison with lead acid batteries, they last as long as 5 occasions longer, says Islam.
Muhammad Delwar Hossain, who has been driving a tuk-tuk within the Dhaka suburb of Tongi for over a decade, began utilizing a SOLshare sensible battery final yr. He says it’s boosted his month-to-month earnings by 50% as a result of he could make extra journeys on a single cost, and he feels his well being has improved as a result of he’s not respiration within the poisonous fumes emitted by the lead-acid battery.
SOLshare’s ambitions go far past tuk-tuks – it desires to rework Bangladesh’s whole vitality sector by a number of strands.
In 2015, the corporate started constructing peer-to-peer solar-powered microgrids that enable households with out photo voltaic panels to purchase extra vitality from others in the neighborhood utilizing a pay-as-you-go cellular top-up system. To date, it has put in 118 microgrids throughout the nation. The startup has raised $6 million thus far.
The firm additionally installs photo voltaic panel techniques for houses and business buildings, and has 27 megawatts of set up within the pipeline, says Islam.
Increasing solar energy will help the nation scale back its reliance on fossil fuels, says Islam – and these microgrids may even feed extra vitality again into the nationwide grid.
SOLshare’s improvements come at a pivotal time for the nation’s vitality sector.
“We had massive power grid failures last summer … that was an eye opener for everyone,” says Islam.
Across the nation, households skilled frequent load-shedding, a observe of enforced energy outages that reduces pressure on the grid to stop a complete blackout. Then, in October 2022, Bangladesh suffered its largest blackout in eight years when the nationwide grid failed and plunged 96 million folks into darkness.
![Bangladesh has the world's largest off-grid solar power program, according to the World Bank. Home solar systems, seen here on the rooftops of Dhaka, supply individual households.](https://media.cnn.com/api/v1/images/stellar/prod/230410115248-07-solshare-growing-bangladesh.jpg?c=16x9&q=h_720,w_1280,c_fill)
Despite being house to the world’s largest off-grid solar energy program, Bangladesh’s fast development and growing demand for electrical energy means renewables account for simply 3.5% of its vitality.
The low-lying nation can be some of the local weather change-vulnerable international locations on the planet and is extremely vulnerable to floods, droughts and storms – so discovering a sustainable technique to assist its rising vitality demand is significant.
“I think they were a little bit early, ahead of their time,” says Sonia Bashir Kabir, founding father of Bangladesh enterprise capital agency SBK Tech Ventures and an early investor in SOLshare. She believes the following 5 years maintain loads of alternative for the corporate.
“The government has taken a very serious mandate to look at climate, which helps because that means the policies are going to be favorable,” she says.
Bangladesh isn’t the one nation struggling to fulfill vitality demand: disruptions within the oil and gasoline provide all through 2022 have precipitated a world vitality disaster. This has fueled a renewable revolution, with photo voltaic and wind vitality rising 30% quicker than anticipated final yr – and lots of are hoping it is going to speed up the enlargement of the inexperienced vitality sector.
![SOLshare installed its first peer-to-peer solar microgrid in 2015, and now has 118 across the country.](https://media.cnn.com/api/v1/images/stellar/prod/230404210556-02-solshare-growing-bangladesh.jpg?c=16x9&q=h_720,w_1280,c_fill)
SOLshare is continuous to improve extra tuk-tuks, in addition to working with battery producers to put in its digital chip straight into the battery.
Through its totally different initiatives, Islam hopes the corporate will change into “Asia’s largest virtual utility provider” – a mannequin that might play “a massive role” in different international locations with massive fleets of electrical three-wheel automobiles, comparable to Thailand and India, she says.
“We are tapping into as many decentralized renewable sources as possible, and not relying on just a central power grid,” says Islam. “The way we see it, if we can do this right here in Bangladesh, you can actually do it anywhere.”
Source: www.cnn.com