Everyone here knows the power goes off. That's not news.

What's different in 2026 is the reason it goes off. That part is worth a few minutes of your time, because it changes what you should be spending money on.

The size of the problem

Load shedding hit 3,592 MW on the worst day this year. Most days it has been sitting somewhere near 3,000 MW.

Numbers that big are hard to picture, so take one evening. The grid managed 13,201 MW. People wanted 15,264 MW. Over 2,000 MW of that demand simply didn't get served.

How much of this you feel depends on where you live. In most rural areas it runs 7 to 8 hours a day without power, and in some places 10 to 12. All eight divisions are getting cuts. The heaviest reported shortages have been in Dhaka division, which takes in the factory belts of Savar, Narayanganj and Gazipur. On the bad days, some garment factories have reported running at 0 to 20 percent of capacity.

There is a detail here that surprises a lot of people. The limit is not the number of power plants.

The limit is fuel, not generating capacity

Of the country's 143 power plants, 71 are either switched off or running well under what they can do. The reason is fuel: gas, coal or furnace oil. Recent grid data marked 62 units as short of it. Twenty six of those run on gas, 33 on liquid fuel and 2 on coal.

Gas is where it really bites. Demand is around 3,800 million cubic feet a day. Supply has been about 2,100. Our own fields give roughly 1,616 and imports add another 950, which still leaves us over 1,100 short. August was the worst month for gas supply in a decade.

An accident on 22 July at an LNG import terminal made things sharper. Pipeline gas dropped by more than 17 percent afterwards. Gas reaching power plants fell to around 700 million cubic feet a day, down from over 900. Gas fired output fell to roughly 3,500 MW, when 5,200 MW is normal. Installed gas fired capacity is around 12,000 MW, and with gas short, about 5,000 MW of it has been usable.

This was accounted for ahead of time. The Power Development Board's summer plan projected that roughly 60 percent of gas plant capacity would stay unused while gas supply was tight.

What it means for you is straightforward enough. The shortage is about fuel, and a lot of that fuel comes from abroad. Shifting when you use power doesn't change any of it.

It costs more now, too

Prices went up on 3 June 2026. BERC raised the average retail tariff by Tk 1.52, from Tk 9.11 to Tk 10.63 a unit, about 16.68 percent. Bulk tariffs rose 19.85 percent, from Tk 7.00 to Tk 8.39. If your home uses 76 to 200 units a month, your rate moved from Tk 7.20 to Tk 8.50, roughly 18 percent more.

So there are fewer hours of supply, and each unit costs more than it did last year. Your backup covers the rest.

And backup costs money to run, which is the part that rarely makes it into a sales pitch. A diesel generator eats fuel every hour it's on. An IPS with ordinary lead acid batteries charges off the grid, so you're paying the new higher rate just to store power, you lose about a third of it in the charging and discharging, and you're buying new batteries every few years.

Why solar suits this particular problem

Panels don't need fuel. That sounds too obvious to say, but it's the whole point. Nothing has to be imported, shipped or delivered to your roof to keep them working.

The timing helps as well. Load shedding is worst in the hot months, in the daytime and early evening, because that's when fans and air conditioners are going flat out. That's also when the sun is strongest. So the hours you lose power and the hours panels produce line up rather well.

The rules have improved lately, and government policy is pushing rooftop solar along. Install a system by 28 February 2027 and under the Net Metering Guidelines you get Tk 10.50 for every unit you send back to the grid, fixed for three years until 28 February 2030. The benchmark cost for generating rooftop solar with battery storage is capped at Tk 8 a unit, and whatever you save below that is yours to keep. Set that against buying power at Tk 10.63. There's a new incentive package for rooftop solar on top of it, and the rules are being widened to cover single phase and prepaid meters, which brings ordinary households in rather than just large buildings.

Then there's the shape of the cost. You pay for solar mostly once, at the start, and the sunlight is free for the next 25 years or so. Tariffs have gone up more than once in recent years. Each rise makes a system you already own look better than it did.

Where solar falls short

If anyone promises you full independence from the grid, on a household budget, in this weather, they're selling rather than advising. The honest limits are worth knowing before you spend anything.

Panels do nothing after sunset. So if your cuts land in the evening you need batteries, and batteries are the expensive part that wears out. The money at the start is real too: net metering improves what you get back over the years, but it doesn't reduce what you hand over on day one. Roof space and shade cap what's possible, which means a small flat with a shared roof may never fit enough panels to matter, whatever the budget. Monsoon weeks give you a fraction of what a clear day gives, so a system sized for sunshine alone will disappoint you in July. And there's upkeep. Dust on the panels costs you output, and we're not short of dust.

Picking something that actually fits

If you only need to ride out a few hours, an IPS or inverter with a properly sized battery will do it. Cheapest way in, no roof needed, though every unit you store was bought at the new tariff.

If you want a smaller bill and cover through daytime cuts, grid connected panels with net metering are the better buy. That's where the returns sit, assuming your outages are mostly in daylight and you've got the roof for it.

If your cuts run long, or hit at night, you're looking at a hybrid setup: panels, a battery bank, and grid charging as the fallback. It costs the most. It's also the only arrangement that genuinely gets you through a 10 hour outage.

And if the real problem is that you can't work, a portable power station keeps your router, laptop, lights and phone going. It won't touch an air conditioner. But it's the quickest way to stop losing a day's work to a power cut.

Which of those is right comes down to when your power actually fails, how much roof you've got, and what you need kept running. There's a specific answer for your home or shop, and a product page can't give it to you.

In short

Fuel is the constraint, and most of it is imported, so this takes longer to unwind than a scheduling problem would. Tariffs have been climbing while it does.

Solar isn't a complete answer on its own. Night time use and the upfront cost are real limits. But it's the one option whose running cost doesn't move when imported gas gets dearer, and the net metering rates on offer right now are the best they've looked in years.

Tell us when your outages happen and what you need to keep running, and we'll size something honestly. That includes telling you when the cheaper option is the better one.