Study of the present scenario of solar irrigation in Bangladesh and design of a new irrigation model to make the solar Irrigation system more feasible

Abstract

Bangladesh has a primarily agrarian economy. Irrigation plays a very important role in our agriculture as well as on our economy. During dry season, irrigation of the whole country faces an acute crisis due to load shedding of 1248 MW. As Bangladesh has good solar resources, with high availability during the peak irrigation season. Therefore, solar pumping of water for irrigation presents an innovative and environment-friendly solution for its largely agro-based economy. Infrastructure Development Company Ltd (IDCOL) is providing financial support to solar irrigation. Already 450 irrigation pumps are installed by IDCOL in different divisions of Bangladesh. In this paper, 450 project’s data are analyzed and the findings are shown by different important graphs. Different division’s radiation, water head and required water are mainly focused in the analysis which will be very supportive for upcoming irrigation projects. To accomplish the analysis on solar irrigation a practical field visit has been made at Poradaho, Kushtia.Thisis a project of Bright Green Energy Foundation (BGEF) and financed by IDCOL. After visiting the project and talking with the farmer, a comparison between solar pump and diesel pump is found which is very significant. In addition, the idea of mini-grid along with irrigation is originated considering the huge load shedding of that area. People of that area remain without electricity for approximately 6-8 hours in a day. For this mini-grid purpose, a small survey was also conducted on 50 houses of that rural area about their electricity demand during the time of load shedding. The mini-grid will be power by the extra energy coming from the irrigation panel. This is done simply by changing the run time of the motor in an efficient way. The run time of the motor varies with different seasons. HOMER software is used to calculate the cost analysis of the proposed model for irrigation along with ac min-grid. In this model, two welfares derive at a time. The first one is that rural farmer can get water for irrigation with a lower installment which is shown in the paper. The second one is the demand of electricity of rural people during load shedding can also be fulfilled from the ac mini-grid. Therefore, the overall cost will be minimized and the new irrigation system will be more feasible for rural farmers as well as for the owner also.