DHAKA, Bangladesh (MNTV) — Bangladesh has launched its first scientific agrivoltaic pilot, testing a system that allows farmers to grow crops on the same land used to generate solar electricity as the densely populated country looks for ways to expand renewable energy without sacrificing farmland.
The 49.6-kilowatt project in the western district of Chuadanga places solar panels above agricultural land, leaving crops to grow underneath. Green chillies are already being cultivated at the site, with rice and other seasonal crops expected to follow, according to The Daily Star.
The experiment addresses a particular challenge facing Bangladesh’s energy transition.
Large solar installations require substantial amounts of land, but diverting productive farmland to energy generation can put additional pressure on a country where agricultural land is already limited and food security remains a major concern.
Agrivoltaics attempts to avoid that trade-off by using the same piece of land twice. Solar panels installed above crops generate electricity while farming continues below them.
Depending on the crop and local conditions, the panels can also provide shade, although their effects on yields have to be carefully measured.
The Chuadanga project is therefore designed as more than a small solar power facility. Researchers will collect data on electricity generation, crop yields and the performance of different crops to determine whether the model can work on a larger scale in Bangladesh.
Those findings are expected to help the government decide where and how agrivoltaic projects could be deployed and develop national rules for combining agriculture with solar generation.
The pilot is being implemented under the Green Energy Transition – Policy Advisory Partnership, or GET-PAP, with funding from the European Union and Germany’s Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development.
Germany’s GIZ is implementing the project with Bangladesh’s Power Division, while the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems is providing technical expertise.
Farmers, researchers and solar-system operators have also received training in growing crops under partial shade, maintaining the installations and collecting digital data, an effort intended to establish the skills needed to reproduce the system elsewhere if the trial proves successful.
The experiment comes as Bangladesh seeks to generate 20% of its electricity from clean energy sources by 2030. Meeting that target through conventional ground-mounted solar farms could intensify competition for land, making technologies that combine power generation with existing land uses increasingly important.
Bangladesh established a national working group on agrivoltaics and floating solar in November 2025 as part of efforts to explore renewable-energy technologies that require less dedicated land.
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