Design and Analysis of Solar PV System for Marine Fishing Trawlers in Bangladesh

Bangladesh is a riverine country, crisscrossed by hundreds of rivers and streams have a length of 24,140 km. Besides it has a coast line of 710 km on the northern part of the Bay of Bengal. Around 1,280,000 fishermen including 770,000 inland and 510,000 marine fishermen live on income earned by fishing activities in inland and coastal areas of Bangladesh. Mostly they use fishing boats or locally made trawlers for fishing purposes in sea and river. The sea going fishermen are detached from land during long sea trip which is around 15 days at a stretch for fishing purposes. They require some electric power for fishing, lighting, cooking, running fan, radio, charging communication set, mobile etc. Presently they fulfill this electric power demand by generator or battery which is connected through a dynamo synchronized with trawler engine. This generator or dynamo costs extra diesel to provide electric power which is expensive and not marine environment friendly due to pollution. This situation can be improved by using environment friendly solar PV system. It can be designed using rooftop area of fishing trawler which was simulated by HOMER and PVsyst software.