Bangladesh Partnership

USAID and NREL support the government of Bangladesh in renewable energy development with a goal of stimulating private sector investment, spurring economic development, and meeting growing energy demand through domestic energy resources.

The Reinforcing Advanced Energy Systems Program

Building on past and ongoing work in Bangladesh, USAID and NREL launched a third phase of partnership with Bangladesh in May 2021, titled Reinforcing Advanced Energy Systems. This project provides unique, world-class technical support for scaling up and deploying advanced energy systems and supporting Bangladesh's transition to a sustainable, secure, and market-driven energy future.

The key to accelerating this transition is creating robust energy policies, plans, and practices that can be effectively deployed. To enable this, with input from Bangladeshi stakeholders, USAID and NREL designed activities to:

Improve the use of data-driven decision-making for energy policies and practices
Increase the adoption of best practices and advanced approaches to energy planning and policy-making
Improve robustness of in-country analytical capabilities for energy decision-making.

Activities span these thematic areas:

Wind energy market support
Renewable energy development solutions
Electric vehicle deployment
Grid modernization and power system flexibility and resiliency
Promotion of institutional partnerships.

"We need to develop knowledge across the power sector to meet our energy generation needs. NREL plays an important role in knowledge-sharing. NREL helps us to bridge knowledge gaps and educate the people working in our power sector to support our energy transition." —Fazlul Hoque, director at the Sustainable and Renewable Energy Development Authority in Bangladesh

Activities

With funding from USAID and in partnership with the government of Bangladesh, NREL led an assessment with in-country partners to quantify the wind resources in Bangladesh, called the Bangladesh Wind Resource Mapping Project. This project included collecting multiyear wind measurements and validating a wind modeling effort for high-quality nationwide wind estimation at various hub heights. As a result of this project, data has become available to stakeholders for decision-making for clean energy policy and planning.

Assessing Wind Energy Potential in Bangladesh, Technical Report (2018)

Offshore Wind Energy for Bangladesh webinar on YouTube

Wind Energy Technology Primer webinar on YouTube

Wind Energy Project Development webinar on YouTube

Wind Energy Fundamentals for the Bangladesh Financial Sector, NREL Presentation (2024)

Offshore Wind Energy Fundamentals for Bangladesh, NREL Presentation (2024)

In conjunction with further governmental and donor agency engagement, insights from private sector groups emerged about the challenges of the request for proposals bidding process for wind power projects. The USAID-NREL Partnership, in collaboration with the Sustainable and Renewable Energy Development Authority, used this feedback to develop a how-to guide for wind developers and provided the necessary steps to develop and interconnect wind projects at the utility scale. The guide includes information such as:

Relevant laws and regulations
Land acquisition considerations
Permitting requirements
Template power purchase agreements
Interconnection requirements and processes.

The government of Bangladesh used information and resources provided in the document to inform the Wind Power Project Installation Guideline it released in 2021 for public comments.

NREL has also released high-quality solar and wind resource data in 2021 and 2023 that covers Southeast Asia, including Bangladesh, through its RE Data Explorer platform. This high spatial and temporal resolution data supports renewable energy feasibility studies and development.

Meeting Bangladesh’s renewable energy objectives also involves managing land availability and transmission congestion constraints. Renewable Energy Zones, which are geographic areas with high-quality utility-scale renewable resources, suitable land topography, and commercial interest, can help address these challenges and support long-term generation and transmission planning. NREL performed a study that identified 19 Renewable Energy Zones candidates areas for priority development, given their combination of strong wind and solar resources.

Identifying Potential Candidates for Renewable Energy Zones in Bangladesh, NREL Presentation, 2024

In March 2022, the Reinforcing Advanced Energy Systems team kicked off electric vehicle (EV) support through a workshop on the building blocks of EV deployment and presented common best practices and emerging solutions that countries can adopt as they deploy EV technologies and scale up their domestic EV industry. As a result of this training, participants understood key concepts, challenges, and opportunities for large-scale EV deployment in Bangladesh.

Building Blocks of Electric Vehicle Deployment in Bangladesh: Day 1, YouTube video

Building Blocks of Electric Vehicle Deployment in Bangladesh: Day 2, YouTube video

In October 2022, the Reinforcing Advanced Energy Systems team hosted additional workshops in Bangladesh with the Sustainable and Renewable Development Authority, the Dhaka Power Distribution Co., other government agencies, and private companies that covered charging standards, charging station business models, fleet electrification, and EV grid impacts in greater detail.

Through the Reinforcing Advanced Energy Systems program, NREL launched grid integration study support and complementary capacity building efforts to assess the impacts of higher penetrations of wind and solar in the Bangladesh grid. The goal of this activity was to build stakeholder confidence that the country's renewable energy and energy security goals can be met while ensuring reliability and affordability. In June 2022, USAID and NREL held a workshop for utilities, system operators, and policymakers that provided a deep dive into the variable renewable energy grid integration study framework and discussed stakeholder expectations.

From October 2022 to February 2023, NREL convened a grid integration modeling working group comprising technical staff from the Bangladesh Power Development Board and the Power Grid Company of Bangladesh. Through these in-person and virtual meetings, NREL covered topics such as production cost modeling and provided trainings on tools such as PLEXOS, RE Data Explorer, and System Advisor Model. This culminated in a set of recommendations and a data repository that Bangladesh stakeholders can use to model their grid.

NREL has also been supporting Bangladesh organizations such as the Northern Electricity Supply Company and the Power Grid Company of Bangladesh with their cybersecurity policies and practices, to ensure secure electricity supplies.

Cybersecurity for Energy Systems: Foundational Concepts for Bangladesh Electric Utilities, NREL Presentation (2024)

The Reinforcing Advanced Energy Systems team developed course materials to use in the inaugural Energy Fundamentals Course organized by the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology in October 2022. Approximately 30 postgraduates and working energy sector professionals participated in the 4-day course. The course materials were intended to be general primers that can be used for similar purposes by other universities or organizations but were not intended to be comprehensive of all related concepts.

Explore the course materials:

Fundamentals of Electric Vehicles

Fundamentals of Energy Security and Resilience

Fundamentals of Energy Storage

Fundamentals of Wind Energy

NREL also hosted a delegation of high-level Bangladesh energy sector officials for a weeklong study tour in May 2023. This study tour spanned a variety of advanced energy system topics, including tours of NREL's cutting-edge research facilities and meetings with experts.

Delegation From Bangladesh, NREL's Longest-Running USAID Country Partner, Touches Down in Colorado, NREL News (2023)