Anisul Islam Noor :
The government has approved contracts with ten different private power generation companies for purchasing electricity for five to 15 years, Power Division officials said.
They said, the combined generation capacity of these plants is estimated to be around 1768MW. These plants will keep a significant role to meet the peak hours’ demand.
Following the approval, Bangla Trac Limited, Aggreko International Company and APR Energy will set up four diesel-fired power plants while Summit Group, Confidence Power, Midland Power Company, Orion Group, Acorn Infrastructure Services and Desh Energy will set up six furnace oil-fired power plants.
The state-run Power Development Board would buy electricity from the six furnace oil-fired power plants at Tk 8.53 per unit for 15 years and at Tk 20.38 per unit from the four diesel-fired plants for five years, the officials said.
The contracts would be awarded under the Speedy Supply of Power and Energy (Special Provisions) Act 2010 that indemnified officials concerned against any prosecution for awarding contracts without any tender.
On August 1, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who also holds the portfolio of Power, Energy and Mineral Resources Ministry, approved the ten power purchase proposals.
The PDB would have to spend about Tk 140,532 crore for buying electricity from the ten power plants over their contract periods, according to the proposals submitted to the purchase committee. Of the total amount, the PDB would spend Tk 55,814 crore for buying electricity from four diesel-fired power plants with 800MW combined capacity under five-year contracts while Tk 84,718 crore for buying electricity from six furnace oil-fired power plants with 968MW combined capacity under 15-year contracts.
Now, the PDB would issue notice of award in favour of the ten companies and set time to sign contracts to bring the plants into operation by March 2018, the officials said.
Energy expert Professor M Shamsul Alam, also an electrical engineer, said that the average price of electricity would exceed Tk 12 per unit from furnace oil-fired plant and Tk 30 per unit from diesel-fired plants even if the prices of fuel oils remained as low as now.
The average price would shot up as 35-40 per cent of the capacity of furnace oil-fired power plants and 25-30 per cent of the capacity of diesel-fired power plants, he explained.
