Hero will have to fund the acquisition of land to host the 486-acre project, plus a 17km power line and electricity sub-station
Haryana-based solar developer Hero Future Energies Asia Pte Ltd has bagged a project to construct a 50 MW solar plant in Bangladesh, the first such Indian investment in utility-scale solar in Bangladesh.
For the project, Hero, part of Hero Motors Co bike and scooter manufacturing group, will partner with Panamanian-registered investment company Business Research International Corporation on the solar project which will be constructed in southern Bangladesh’s Khulna district.
Hero will have to fund the acquisition of land to host the 486-acre project, plus a 17km power line and electricity sub-station, with grid access restrictions having forced Hero Future Energies to halve the scale of what was originally intended to be a 100 MW plant.
The cabinet committee on public purchase of Bangladesh approved the 20-year power purchase agreement for the solar field, which will set a tariff of $0.1025/kWh for the electricity generated, for a total bill to the exchequer of an estimated $157 million.
With Bangladesh hosting just 766.8 MW of renewables generation capacity at present, the government wants 40 per cent of the nation’s energy to come from clean power plants by 2041.
Hero Future Energies claims to have a 1.2 GW solar and wind power portfolio with a further 1.5 GW planned or under construction.
Having announced the ambition of having 5 GW of installed capacity online next year, Hero says it has developed 500 MW of large scale solar in European and Asian nations including Bangladesh, Singapore, Vietnam, the Philippines, Indonesia and the U.K.
