When Teesta Solar Limited powered on in August 2023, stretching across 263 hectares in Bangladesh's Gaibandha district, it began doing something quietly crucial: generating electricity without burning a single drop of fuel. Today, the 200-megawatt plant produces between 1,000 and 1,200 megawatt-hours of electricity daily, feeding power into a national grid increasingly starved by gas shortages and fuel import costs that have pushed the country toward rolling blackouts.
Bangladesh's energy crisis has become acute. Of the country's 136 power plants and electricity import sources, at least 52 are completely shut down due to gas and coal shortages. The 1,200-megawatt Ghorashal facility near Dhaka—one of the nation's largest gas-fired plants—now sits idle, its seven units offline. Despite having installed electricity generation capacity of 28,919 megawatts, far exceeding peak demand, the country has struggled in recent months to generate enough power. In May alone, Bangladesh faced a generation shortfall of 3,868 megawatts due to gas constraints and another 1,668 megawatts from plant shutdowns and maintenance. The result: periodic load-shedding, or blackouts, rippling across the nation.
Into this crisis, solar has emerged as an unlikely stabilizer. While gas-fired plants dependent on imported fuel languish at reduced capacity, and coal-fired facilities sit idle, solar installations continue converting sunlight into electricity during daylight hours, insulated from the global fuel price volatility that has crippled Bangladesh's fossil fuel infrastructure. According to a Bangladesh Power Development Board report from May 10, solar contributed 5,377 megawatt-hours to the national grid that day—a modest 1.7 percent of total generation, yet vital during a period when gas provided 127,700 megawatt-hours and coal added 105,400 megawatt-hours, both constrained by supply bottlenecks.
The importance of solar becomes most vivid in the Rangpur region, one of Bangladesh's poorest areas, where the technology has become the primary daytime power source. Teesta Solar, the 30-megawatt Lalmonirhat Solar Plant, and the 8-megawatt Majhipara facility collectively serve a region where solar now accounts for roughly 84 percent of daytime electricity generation. "Although our contribution to the national grid is still relatively small, it becomes particularly important during periods of energy crisis," said Md. Sazid Zakir, senior manager at Teesta Solar. "During the summer season, these solar plants achieve their highest output, and at times our facility generates up to [the full] 200 megawatts."
Experts say Bangladesh could meaningfully reduce its exposure to volatile global fuel markets by expanding solar capacity. The country currently operates just 777 megawatts of solar generation—only 2.7 percent of total installed capacity—alongside 230 megawatts of hydropower and 62 megawatts of wind. Gas-fired plants, by contrast, dominate with 12,472 megawatts (43 percent), followed by coal at 7,769 megawatts (26.9 percent). Yet the barriers remain substantial: land availability constraints, inconsistent policy support, and slow implementation timelines have repeatedly stalled growth. Teesta Solar sells electricity to the national grid at around 12 taka—roughly 10 U.S. cents—per kilowatt-hour, a rate that makes expansion economically viable if political will materializes. As Bangladesh's energy crisis deepens, the question is no longer whether solar matters, but whether the nation can expand it fast enough.