On a pond at Walton Hi-Tech Park in Chandra, Gazipur, rows of solar panels float on the water while fish are farmed beneath them. According to Samakal, it is the largest floating solar plant in the country, with a capacity of 2.25 megawatts.
The panels sit on discarded plastic drums, so the plant needs no land of its own and the pond is still used for fish. Factories have usually put solar panels on roofs and open ground; here the same body of water produces both power and fish.
Panels have also gone up on the factory roofs, the walkways and the car parks. A solar shade about two and a half kilometres long over the footpath keeps sun and rain off pedestrians and generates 1.1 megawatts.
Md Yusuf Ali, additional managing director of Walton Hi-Tech Industries, said the company's solar capacity is now 32 megawatts, with 18 more planned by December this year to reach 50. The company needs about 35 megawatts and wants to meet a large share of its daytime demand from its own solar power.
The company is also looking at solar panels in farming. It is in talks with agronomists and testing whether panels suit fields of crops that are harmed by long spells of harsh sun.
Walton is preparing to make solar equipment at home as well: lithium-ion batteries, storage batteries and solar inverters. Infrastructure Development Company Limited (IDCOL) has committed Tk 144 crore to the project and released Tk 44 crore, and those involved hope lithium-ion battery production can start next month.
The report is by Samakal's Hasnain Imtiaz, who visited Gazipur.
Photo: SPG Solar / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0); a floating solar array on an irrigation pond in California, United States (illustrative).
Source: samakal
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