Bangladesh’s constant growth with an annual 6% plus Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for more than the last two decades and achievements in other socio-economic metrics in recent times is impressive and recognized by various global authoritative bodies. The extent of overwhelming economic ventures in the private sector coupled with the commitments of the government clearly demonstrates the transformation of the country from a primarily agro-based economy to one influenced by the manufacturing and service sectors. Bangladesh is fortunate to have fossil fuel reserves on a limited scale, though these are not enough to run the ongoing massive scale development activities, both in private and public sectors. Thus, the constant and uninterrupted supply of energy at an affordable price remains a serious concern for the successive governments. Therefore, this issue of supply of constant energy has turned to be an important part in the national development agenda. Besides, the country is one of the worst victim nations of the devastating effects of global warming and climate change. As Bangladesh is geographically located in a favorable place in the world map with the availability of plenty of renewable energy sources (RES), the policymakers started to take initiatives leading to exploiting these sources to meet the energy demand of the country. There are both prospects and administrative, legal, technological, socio-cultural and environmental challenges. To address these challenges, it requires comprehensive policy initiatives. A good number of technical and scientific research containing findings and recommendations are available. This paper, which is based on adopting a qualitative research methodology where the contents of secondary sources were analyzed, is an initial attempt to highlight the renewable energy developments in Bangladesh, and subsequently, to evaluate the relevant legal and policy initiatives in the light of international best practices. We advance several recommendations that the stakeholders can consider exploiting RES effectively to attain inclusive, equitable and sustainable development in Bangladesh. These include, inter alia: (1) Enhancing government participation to lead the development of renewable energy (RE); (2) ensuring localization of RE technology; (3) reducing the expenses of energy generation through RES and providing assistance in initial investments; (4) introducing comprehensive legal and regulatory policy for the development of RE industry in Bangladesh; and (5) conducting effective public awareness.

In this paper, the applications of thermoplastic, thermoset polymers, and a brief description of the functions of each subsystem are reviewed. The synthetic route and characteristics of polymeric materials are presented. The mechanical properties of polymers such as impact behavior, tensile test, bending test, and thermal properties like mold stress-relief distortion, generic thermal indices, relative thermal capability, and relative thermal index are mentioned. Furthermore, this paper covers the electrical behavior of polymers, mainly their dielectric strength. Different techniques for evaluating polymers’ suitability applied for electrical insulation are covered, such as partial discharge and high current arc resistance to ignition. The polymeric materials and processes used for manufacturing cables at different voltage ranges are described, and their applications to high voltage DC systems (HVDC) are discussed. The evolution and limitations of polymeric materials for electrical application and their advantages and future trends are mentioned. However, to reduce the high cost of filler networks and improve their technical properties, new techniques need to be developed. To overcome limitations associated with the accuracy of the techniques used for quantifying residual stresses in polymers, new techniques such as indentation are used with higher force at the stressed location.

In order to investigate how artificial neural networks (ANNs) have been applied for partial discharge (PD) pattern recognition, this paper reviews recent progress made on ANN development for PD classification by a literature survey. Contributions from several authors have been presented and discussed. High recognition rate has been recorded for several PD faults, but there are still many factors that hinder correct recognition of PD by the ANN, such as high-amplitude noise or wide spectral content typical from industrial environments, trial and error approaches in determining an optimum ANN, multiple PD sources acting simultaneously, lack of comprehensive and up to date databank of PD faults, and the appropriate selection of the characteristics that allow a correct recognition of the type of source which are currently being addressed by researchers. Several suggestions for improvement are proposed by the authors include: (1) determining the optimum weights in training the ANN; (2) using PD data captured over long stressing period in training the ANN; (3) ANN recognizing different PD degradation levels; (4) using the same resolution sizes of the PD patterns when training and testing the ANN with different PD dataset; (5) understanding the characteristics of multiple concurrent PD faults and effectively recognizing them; and (6) developing techniques in order to shorten the training time for the ANN as applied for PD recognition Finally, this paper critically assesses the suitability of ANNs for both online and offline PD detections outlining the advantages to the practitioners in the field. It is possible for the ANNs to determine the stage of degradation of the PD, thereby giving an indication of the seriousness of the fault.

It is a challenging task for Bangladesh to meet its increasing demand of energy while its economy is rapidly growing. Though prices of oil, coal, and fossil fuels around the world have been volatile, the price trend in Bangladesh demonstrates a persistent rise in the immediate past. This is further exacerbated by depleting reserves of natural gas. Cumulatively, these two effects heighten Bangladesh’s energy needs. Bangladesh presently mitigates her energy requirements predominantly through natural gas, supplemented by a handful of coal and furnace oil plants. Consequently, due to scarcity of natural gas, oil and coal resources, nuclear power surfaces as a palatable strategic option for Bangladesh’s future development agenda. However, a successful nuclear power program entails an extensive infrastructure. Just like the other nuclear energy-producing countries, Bangladesh also face challenges to safeguard the health and security of nuclear reactors, the proper management for nuclear waste treatment and the security concerns over the safe usage of nuclear materials. Additionally, the development of nuclear energy is also bewildered because of the complex nature of fission technology, lack of efficient human resources, and non-existence of proper legal instruments to guide safe nuclear power production. Moreover, the further challenges include the questions, for example: whether the nuclear power plant project is supported by the mass people or not? What are the strategies for nuclear waste disposal? Whether the recent initiatives for nuclear energy production is necessary or the country should more concern with renewable sources? This paper evaluates the nuclear energy development in Bangladesh. It operates under qualitative methodological framework and utilises secondary sources for analysis. We advance several recommendations in this paper to remedy the highlighted issues: (1) creating a comprehensive legal and regulatory system; (2) fortifying home-based technology of nuclear development and simultaneously localising of foreign-based technology; (3) reducing the cost of nuclear energy production; (4) fast-tracking the procedure of efficient development of nuclear technology; (5) accelerating the procedure of switching to more efficient reactor and nuclear fuel cycle, and (6) conducting effective profile-raising activities to generate greater awareness and spur common acceptance.

Climate change poses profound threats to the Earth and its people. Its mitigation, therefore, demands common but differentiated actions with comprehensive and coordinated approach. The global community has pledged to mitigate various greenhouse gases in some international soft law instruments. Exploitation of renewables to generate energy and produce electricity is simultaneously suggested for the last couple of decades as a viable alternative in mitigating climate change. This gets momentum with the adoption of the historical and universally ratified Paris Agreement in 2016 where energy is placed at the heart of the Agreement. Energy, where renewable energy is a branch, is generally regulated and governed domestically and so, international legal regime is still evolving in this regard. In the absence of any specific and direct international instrument on energy and renewable energy, published literatures have considered this topic from different directions ranging from climate change to the principle of national sovereignty, economic, trade and investment issues. In this backdrop, this paper aims to introduce various renewable sources, prospects and challenges in their promotion that may help to mitigate the adverse effects of climate change. Relevant international law provisions have been evaluated, performances of the relevant regional and international organizations active in this sector are highlighted and some of the disputes in this area considered in international forums are duly addressed. It is revealed that strong political will of the global community in fulfilling their commitments made so far in different international forums is the key to transforming the world into a better one for the future generation.

This paper compared the capabilities of the artificial neural network (ANN) and the fuzzy logic (FL) approaches for recognizing and discriminating partial discharge (PD) fault classes. The training and testing parameters for the ANN and FL comprise statistical fingerprints from different phase-amplitude-number (φ-q-n) measurements. Two PD fault classes considered are internal discharges in voids and surface discharges. In the void class, there are single voids, serial voids and parallel voids in polyethylene terephthalate (PET), while the surface discharge class comprises four different surface discharge arrangements on pressboard in oil at different voltages and angular positioning of the ground electrode on the respective pressboards. Previously, the ANN and FL have been investigated for PD classification, but there is no work reported in the literature that compares their performance, specifically when applied for real time PD detection problem. As expected, both the ANN and FL can recognize PD defect classes, but the results show that the ANN appears to be more robust as compared to the FL, but these conclusions required to be further investigated with complex PD examples. Finally, both the ANN and FL were assessed as practical PD classification. Despite of the limitations of the ANN, it is concluded that the ANN is better suited for practical PD recognition because of its ability to provide accurate recognition values and the severity level of PD defects.