Fully Electric Off-Grid Farm

The ask

Develop a commercially viable large-scale farm (50–200 ha) running entirely on solar power and battery storage — irrigation pumps, cold storage, processing equipment — with no grid connection or diesel inputs, and use it as both a profitable agricultural enterprise and a replicable model.

Why now

Utility-scale solar in Bangladesh has reached ৳6–8 per kWh installed on a CAPEX basis, below diesel generator cost (৳14–18/kWh) for the first time. Lithium iron phosphate battery costs have fallen 85 % since 2018 and are now viable for agricultural load profiles. BREB grid reliability in rural areas remains poor (8–12 hours of load-shedding per day in summer) — the grid is now the backup option, not the default.

Why Bangladesh

BD's agricultural sector spends an estimated ৳8,000–12,000 crore per year on diesel for irrigation alone. Flood-prone chars and coastal land — often the most fertile — are grid-isolated and therefore dependent on diesel at premium prices. An off-grid solar farm in such a location has lower input costs than a grid-connected competitor, not higher. The government's Mujib Climate Prosperity Plan explicitly targets agricultural electrification.

As a business

The farm earns from crop sales at market rates — the structural advantage is lower operating cost versus grid/diesel competitors (energy cost drops from ৳14–18/kWh diesel to ৳4–6/kWh solar amortised). A secondary revenue stream comes from licensing the operational model to other farmers or agricultural investors; a third from selling excess solar capacity to neighbouring farms via a micro-grid. The model farm is both a real business and a demonstration asset.

Economics

Move the sliders to model your own off-grid farm. Defaults are order-of-magnitude estimates — pressure-testing them is part of what a founder pitches us.

What ZEPH would back

This is a capital-intensive bet — we'd want a co-investment structure with a development finance institution (IFC, ADB, AIIB) sharing the solar infrastructure risk. The founder needs agricultural operations experience as well as renewable energy finance literacy. The prize is a replicable model that can roll out across BD's 100,000 ha of char and coastal farmland.

Impact

Replacing diesel irrigation across a 100 ha farm eliminates an estimated 200–300 tonnes of CO₂e per year — diesel at ৳14–18/kWh is one of Bangladesh's most carbon-intensive agricultural inputs. At the national scale, the country's ৳8,000–12,000 crore annual diesel irrigation bill represents roughly 5–7 million tonnes of CO₂e per year; a replicable off-grid solar farm model with micro-grid sharing addresses a large fraction of that. Every US dollar of diesel import displaced is foreign exchange retained; at 100 ha and an estimated 300 MWh/year of solar generation, the farm saves approximately USD 35,000 in diesel imports annually. The demonstration-farm model accelerates adoption across Bangladesh's grid-isolated chars and coastal zone.