“Electrification in Rural Bangladesh Using Solar Home System: Progress, Problem and Prospect”
manuscript submitted to the Journal of Renewable and Sustainable Energy ( Click to open/close tabs )

Electrification is one of the most crucial factors to ensure economic growth and industrialization in Bangladesh. Being in a developing country, people from various districts of Bangladesh have been experiencing a severe electricity crisis due to the increasing daily demand for power, which outweighs the supply of on-grid electricity. This poor energy situation is evident by the fact that only slightly more than half of the total Bangladeshi population has been able to access on-grid electricity while two-thirds of rural households have been living without. Consequently, the shortage of energy hampers socio-economic development and lowers living standards of people. Since, non-renewable sources such as fossil fuels and natural gas, the primary sources of energy production in Bangladesh, are limited, usage of renewable energy technology (RET) such as solar energy efficiently can satisfy the rising energy demand and in turn improve the existing energy shortage situation. Adopting the Solar Home System (SHS) has enabled access to electricity in households in off-grid rural areas of Bangladesh where the possibility of extending on-grid electricity is less likely in the foreseeable future. This review research paper depicts the progress of SHS in rural areas over the last one and a half decades (1996-2014) and the socio-economic as well as the environmental benefits to SHS households. This paper also presents the prospects of SHS in rural areas of Bangladesh as well as aims to explain some of the challenges which SHS has been experiencing that can hinder significant progress of SHS installations in rural households. Detailed survey results and analysis have been provided in this review paper which indicates noticeable increments in the number of SHSs installed in various rural villages in Bangladesh and the improvements in the livelihoods of SHS adopted households.

“Luminous Measurement of LED Lights in Cost Effective Way Using Cylindrical Method” -
manuscript submitted to the Journal of MEASUREMENT – by Elsevier Science Ltd ( Click to open/close tabs )

Because of several Solar Home System components’ manufacturers in the market, overall quality of LED lamps fluctuates from organization to organization. There is an increment in unsteady quality with the number of SHS installation and thus in the system ineffectiveness. As a result, testing of LED lamps used in SHS plays significant role in maintaining the quality. However, existing procedures i.e. integrated sphere for lumen testing is quite costly in our country’s perspective; so we have used our handmade cylindrical black box of different dimensions and sizes in CARC (previously known as CARG) lab, BRAC University. In this research we have included the testing results collected from our measurement process and also have established some relevant equations from what we have measured the total lumen of the light source.

S. A. Khan, R. Rahman, and A. Azad
"15 Years of Solar Home System in Rural Bangladesh:
Progress, Problems and Prospect",
Energy Science and Engineering (under review) ( Click to open/close tabs )

This research presents a detailed study of rural electrification in Bangladesh with Solar Home System (SHS) for the last one and half decades(1998-2012). It is seen that, in last 10 years, SHS installation has increased almost exponentially along with its popularity. In spite of this tremendous success, many questions have already arisen towards its effectiveness in sustainable development. Problems like: low quality components, insufficient technical knowledge of consumers, inadequate after sale-service and improper monitoring system is going to lead SHS towards saturation period. In addition, political interruptions and local syndicates are another finding of this research that is causing damage of SHS market. However, few structural steps can reduce those negative effects and prevent possible destruction of this industry. Survey analysis of this paper exhibits that, suitable and pressure free components testing facility, proper monitoring & management system, choosing effective technical person to support and install system and finally, increasing understanding level between Partner Organizations (POs) & consumers can make SHS business smoother. Maintaining all the discussions, an elaborate literature review has been done to inspect the progress, problems and future prospect of SHS industry in rural Bangladesh.

A. Azad, R. Rahman, S. A. Khan and R. Hasan
"Automation, Heat Loss Reduction and Optimum Positioning of Solar Hot Water
System with Storage Tank in Perspective of Bangladesh",
Journal of Electrical Engineering (under review) ( Click to open/close tabs )

Hospitals, industries, households - any kind of infrastructure requires hot water and a lot of electricity and gas is being used up for that. Natural resources like fuel and coal are in limited amount and will not be able to sustain forever. Consequently, renewable energy is starting to gain popularity in Bangladesh. As a commitment to the development of the energy sector of Bangladesh, Control and Applications Research Group (CARG), BRAC University has developed a Solar Hot Water System (SHWS) that would utilize solar energy to heat water, which could be used for several purposes like sterilization of medical equipment, cleaning of dishes, etc. An automated pilot project has been implemented of the roof-top of BRAC University and research work has been conducted for increasing the efficiency of the whole system by increasing the captured insolation and reducing wastage of heat overnight through insulation of the storage tank. This paper concentrates on highlighting the technology implemented in the system and the improvisations made to better the efficiency and presents a comparison between commercially available hot water systems with the developed SHWS.

S.A.Khan, A.Azad
"Social Impact of Solar Home System in rural Bangladesh:A Case Study of Rural Zone"
IAFOR (The International Academic Forum)
Journal of Sustainability,Energy and the Environment, JAPAN vol. 1, issue 1,2013 ( Click to open/close tabs )

Initial research on Solar Home System (SHS) was related to the evaluation of its present condition in Bangladesh. Afterward, considering its increasing demand, a gigantic research was conducted to find standard qualification testing procedure for SHS components. Sequentially, following research deals with the socio-economic impact and sustainable development in rural areas of Bangladesh using SHS.A combination of qualitative and quantitative methodological tactics was accompanied to provide descriptive evidence concerning electricity's impact on the assessable socio-economic data. Qualitative consultations with specialists involved in the SHS propagation method delivered overall information related to SHS pac- kages and exposed the professional's individual opinion regarding socio-economic impacts of solar electricity in rural part of Bangladesh. To finalize this information with field-level data, a pervasive household survey and individual short interviews with shop-keepers were performed in a rura l area which is near Dhaka city. SHSs contribute to sustainable development mainly through the improvement of social a spects of rural life. Implementation of SHSs in rural Bangladesh causes optimistic impacts, particularly in the areas of education, health, information, communication, social security and household works. Plummeting of CO2 emissions through the substitution of traditional lighting fuels has to be mentioned as a positive environmental impact. The economic impacts of the SHSs are limited to an increase in income of shops. Previously, SHSs are mostly used by households with high incomes, but focusing on poorer household has extended the opportunity of developing both social sides. During the last few decades, implantation rate of SHSs are much notable than any other renewable energy system especially in rural areas. Showing the impact on rural development, this research will amplify the opportunity of SHSs in long run having adequate government subsidy.

M. Azad, C. M. I. Hussain and M. Alam
"A Different Approach to Improve the Performance of DPDC SCADA System"
Accepted to be appeared in International Journal of Energy
and Power Engineering, David Publishing, USA, 2013 ( Click to open/close tabs )

Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition (SCADA) system is extensively used in power systems specifically for monitoring different power parameters, operating and controlling power electronics as well as other high voltage elements, for example breakers tripping or constant data procurement form current, voltage or power transformers. SCADA system failure can be an effect of inevitable consequences which include equipment damage, customer load losses even life losses. Dhaka Power Distribution Company Ltd. (DPDC) former DESA has been using SCADA over a decade which was developed by ABB. After its introduction in DPDC, the SCADA system hardly had any performance upgrade. At the early stage ABB came across some limitations which later on were solved in such a way that may not convene the time precision that present technological development demands. ABB used soft real-time operating system UNIX. This OS usually responses with high latency which sometimes caused some remote power elements (breakers) to fail in certain time frame. Evaluating these consequences, this paper presents some draw backs of current DPDC, SCADA system and proposed Hard RT Linux as an operating system.

Adnan Al Moshi, Salwa Salam Cynthia, Eftakhairul Islam, Rumana Rahman and Akm Abdul Malek Azad
"A Performance Analysis of Robotic Arm Manipulators Control System under Multitasking Environment"
Published in International Journal of Energy and Power Engineering,
May 2012, Vol.: 2, Number: 5, Pages:327 - 331,
ISSN 2159- 5275 (Print) and ISSN 2159-5283 (Online), David Publishing, USA ( Click to open/close tabs )

This work is to observe the performance of PC based robot manipulator under general purpose (Windows), Soft (Linux) and Hard (RT Linux) Real Time Operating Systems (OS). The same open loop control system is observed in different operating systems with and without multitasking environment. The Data Acquisition (DAQ, PLC-812PG) card is used as a hardware interface. From the experiment, it could be seen that in the non real time operating system (Windows), the delay of the control system is larger than the Soft Real Time OS (Linux). Further, the authors observed the same control system under Hard Real Time OS (RT-Linux). At this point, the experiment showed that the real time error (jitter) is minimum in RT-Linux OS than the both of the previous OS. It is because the RT-Linux OS kernel can set the priority level and the control system was given the highest priority. The same experiment was observed under multitasking environment and the comparison of delay was similar to the preceding evaluation.

Jannatul Ferdous, Md Sanzidul Islam, Nabil Shaker, Bonny Amin Khan, A. Azad
"Performance Improvement of SHWS by Increasing Thermal Efficiency Using Insulation Materials and Optimum Position of Solar Collectors"
Published in International Journal of Advance Renewable Energy Research, 2012,
Vol.: 1, Issue: 1, Pages:78 - 83, IJARER, Germany ( Click to open/close tabs )

The word itself "Solar" describes that we are dealing with some renewable energy source for a hot water system. A Solar Hot Water System (SHWS) has been already designed, further implementation has been done by working on its insulation at variable time, temperature and solar radiation so that there is a minimum temperature drop over night decreases. A suitable material is found for insulation which is feasible, cost effective and available. For this project an instrument named "Pyranometer" has been used to measure solar radiation flux density (in watts per meter square) and the experimental data collected from pyranometer will be used to find the optimum position of SHWS.

C. Basak, C. M. I. Hussain and A. M. Azad
"A New Approach to Improve the Reliability of DPDC SCADA Communication Systems"
Published in International Journal of Energy and Power Engineering, July 2010,
Vol.: 4, Number: 7, Pages:48 - 54, ISSN 1934-8975, David Publishing, USA ( Click to open/close tabs )

Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) is used broadly to portray control and management solutions in a wide range of industries. SCADA system failure may lead to disastrous consequences since the health and the safety of the public as the economic viability of the community it serves depends on it. After its introduction in DPDC over a decade ago, the SCADA system hardly had any performance upgradation. Currently, the microwave link in SCADA Communication is observing problems that are rendering the entire structure obsolete. This paper revises the possibility to implement a new communication technology and proposes Free Space Optical (FSO) communication to enhance SCADA system reliability. FSO refers to the transmission of modulated visible or infrared (IR) beams through the air to obtain optical communication.