Staff Reporter :
One of the power generation units of the Barapukuria 525MW Coal Fired Power Plant in Parbatipur upazila of Dinajpur was shut down on Tuesday afternoon after operating for only nine days.
“We shut it down at 3:05pm on Tuesday,” Abdul Hakim Sakar, chief engineer of the plant, told journalists.
There are three units of the plant, operated by Bangladesh Power Development Board (BPDB). Their joint generation capacity is 525MW.
Two units are capable of generating 250MW power together while another unit can generate 275MW electricity.
The power plant that had been supplying around 380MW power to the national grid on an average was shut down on July 22 for lack of coal soon after the disappearance of around 1.45 lakh tonnes of coal from the stockyard of Barapukuria Coal Mining Company Limited (BCMCL), which was detected on July 16.
The market price of the missing coal is around Tk 230 crore.
BPDB got supply of 5,000 tonnes of coal from BCMCL in last one month which was used for operating the plant for nine days. The plant will restart again once BPDB gets supply of coal, Hakim said.
Meanwhile, it is still uncertain when coal production from BCMCL will resume as underground development work is still going on.
Coal production of BCMCL was suspended on June 16, said the officials. Saiful Islam, general manager (mine operation) of BCMCL, claimed that coal production may resume from September 15.
However, the miners who are involved with the task said production may be delayed for 10 more days.
Around 5,200 tonnes of coal are required to keep the three units in operation, but BPDB never got the required supply from BCMCL before.
