Bangladesh is looking up at the sun because it has run out of convincing answers on the ground. Load shedding has returned with a force that is difficult to ignore. At times, the country has faced an electricity shortfall of several thousand megawatts, leaving households and businesses to endure hours without reliable power.
Against this backdrop, solar energy has acquired an almost irresistible political appeal. If the grid cannot produce enough electricity, perhaps the country’s rooftops can.
The government now wants to increase solar power capacity to 10,000 megawatts during its current term. Its National Renewable Energy Development Strategy 2026-2030 has set an even broader ambition: Renewable energy should account for 20% of total electricity generation by 2030, with rooftop solar alone expected to contribute 5,500 megawatts. These are ambitious numbers. They are also numbers that deserve more scrutiny than applause.
The central idea is simple enough. Bangladesh does not have the luxury of dedicating vast stretches of land to solar parks. Producing one megawatt of solar electricity can require more than two acres, and land is already among the country’s scarcest resources. So instead of searching for empty land, the government wants to use the land it has already built over: Rooftops.
There is something almost poetic about the idea. The roof over a person’s head could also become a small power station. A factory could produce both garments and electricity. A shopping centre could become a generator. Millions of ordinary buildings could collectively become a giant distributed power plant. Through net metering, consumers could use the electricity they generate and send their surplus to the national grid.
But poetry does not pay for solar panels.
A three-kilowatt rooftop solar system can cost around Tk 3 lakh. The investment may potentially be recovered over five or six years, depending on electricity generation, loan costs, roof size, and equipment quality. For a middle-class household, however, Tk 3 lakh is not an insignificant amount. For millions of families and small businesses, it is the difference between an attractive energy solution and an impossible purchase.
That is why financing will determine whether Bangladesh’s rooftop solar dream becomes a mass movement or remains a program for those who already have money. Experts estimate that generating 500 megawatts through rooftop solar could require panels on roughly 10 to 12 lakh rooftops and an investment of Tk 30,000-40,000 crore. The question is not simply whether such money exists. The question is whether ordinary people and small entrepreneurs can actually access it.
The government has discussed low-interest loans, tax and customs benefits, start-up funds, and installment facilities. All of these sound encouraging. But Bangladesh has never suffered from a shortage of promising financial schemes on paper. The real test begins when a small entrepreneur walks into a bank and asks for money.
There is another danger. A program intended to democratize energy could end up creating another concentrated market. The government says young people, women, and small and medium entrepreneurs will be encouraged to participate through local service providers. But without adequate finance, training, and institutional support, the smaller players could become little more than subcontractors for large companies.
The technical challenge is equally serious. A rooftop solar system is not something that can simply be installed, photographed, and forgotten. Panels, inverters, and other equipment require maintenance. Faulty installations can reduce efficiency or become expensive burdens for consumers. If millions of rooftops are to become part of the electricity system, Bangladesh will need a large network of properly trained technicians capable of maintaining them over years, not merely installing them in the first place.
This is where the government’s proposed service-provider model could either succeed brilliantly or become another bureaucratic experiment. Area-based companies are expected to provide technical assistance, financing and business packages, customer service, installation and maintenance. The model makes sense. But it immediately raises another question: Who will watch the service providers?
A consumer who receives poor mobile service can change operators. Someone whose rooftop solar system fails after installation may not have such an easy escape. The regulatory system must therefore be designed before the market becomes crowded.
The most uncomfortable issue, however, may be institutional accountability. The renewable energy sector already involves several state agencies, and questions have been raised about who will ultimately regulate, supervise, and implement the new initiative. If the same institutional structure becomes simultaneously policy-maker, participant, and supervisor, accountability can quickly become a circular exercise in which everyone is responsible and nobody is accountable.
That is particularly dangerous in Bangladesh’s energy sector, where large sums of public and private money are involved. Solar power should not become another arena in which ambitious targets are celebrated while the details of procurement, pricing, quality control, and enforcement remain obscure.
Then comes the question that could determine the entire economics of rooftop solar: What is the electricity actually worth?
Net metering works because consumers have an incentive to generate electricity and send excess power into the grid. But that incentive depends on the price at which surplus electricity is valued. Set the price too low and consumers will not find the investment attractive. Set it too high and the cost could eventually be transferred to the power sector and, ultimately, the public.
A transparent benchmark price is therefore the economic foundation of the entire program. Investors need predictability. Consumers need to know when their investment will pay back. Banks need to calculate risk. Regulators need to understand the fiscal consequences. Without a credible pricing model, everyone is being asked to invest in a market whose rules are still moving.
Bangladesh’s previous experience should also make policy-makers cautious. More than six million solar home systems were distributed in rural areas beginning in 2003, demonstrating that the country can adopt solar technology on a large scale. But moving from off-grid systems to millions of grid-connected rooftop systems is a much more complicated proposition. It requires not only panels but a grid capable of absorbing electricity generated by thousands or millions of independent producers.
There is also little wisdom in making solar mandatory simply because the government wants the numbers to rise quickly. A previous requirement for rooftop solar on certain multi-storey buildings has reportedly produced limited results. That should tell policy-makers something important: People do not necessarily resist solar energy; they resist systems that make them pay without giving them reliable service, predictable savings, or adequate support.
The smarter approach is to make solar economically irresistible rather than administratively compulsory. If grid electricity becomes increasingly expensive and rooftop generation genuinely lowers monthly costs, consumers will not need much persuasion. They will install panels because the mathematics tells them to.
The government’s solar ambition, therefore, should not be judged by how many megawatts it announces. It should be judged by what happens after the panels are installed.
There are several questions that need to be answered:
Do they continue working five years later? Can consumers obtain affordable financing? Are technicians available outside Dhaka? Can a small entrepreneur compete with a large corporation? Is the price of surplus electricity transparent? Can a consumer complain when a service provider fails? Can regulators punish negligence without political or commercial interference?
These questions are less glamorous than announcing 10,000 megawatts but they are the questions that will determine whether those megawatts ever become meaningful.
Bangladesh’s energy crisis has created a powerful case for renewable energy. The country cannot continue treating imported fuel, expensive generation, and recurring load shedding as permanent features of economic life. Solar power offers an opportunity to diversify the energy system while creating new businesses, jobs and local investment.
But sunlight alone cannot solve an institutional problem.
Bangladesh may have millions of roofs and plenty of sunlight, but neither resource will automatically produce reliable electricity. What will matter is whether the government can build a system in which money is accessible, prices are fair, equipment is reliable, technicians are competent, regulators are independent, and service providers are accountable.
The country is ready to put solar panels on its rooftops. The bigger question is whether its institutions are ready to stand underneath them.
HM Nazmul Alam is an Academic, Journalist, and Political Analyst based in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Currently he teaches at IUBAT.
