Staff Reporter :
Bangladesh has decided to allow India to use its land to transmit 6,000 megawatt of electricity from Assam to Bihar through Dinajpur constructing a new electricity network as part of power cooperation between the two neighbouring countries, officials said.
A committee has been formed to assess the feasibility of transmitting electricity from Rangia Raota in Assam to Borakpur in Bihar through Dinajpur’s Boro Pukuria, said Power Secretary Monowar Islam.
The committee members have been asked to submit the report within six months, said power secretary to reporters at a joint briefing of the seventh meeting of the Bangladesh-India joint steering committee on power cooperation.
The briefing was held in a city hotel on Thursday.
When asked, Monowar Islam could not immediately say about the benefit Bangladesh would avail for allowing its neighbour to use its soil. He, however, said: Bangladesh will definitely get some power from the power network.
Transmitting of power will begin in 2017. The electricity will be produced in hydropower projects in Arunachal Pradesh.
Indian Power Secretary PK Sinha, who led the Indian delegation to the two-day meeting, said that already 500mw of electricity was flowing to Bangladesh from India.
“We will examine whether another 25 to 30mw can be supplied to Bangladesh through the same existing grid,” he said. PK Sinha also said that the first phase of Rampal coal-based power plant would be set up with super-critical technology. “This technology pollutes much less, is efficient and consumes less coal,” he said. He could not categorically say about the tariff for the power to be produced at the Rampal plant. He, however, said the power tariff of coal-based plants in India is around Tk 6.5 to Tk 7 per unit.
“The tariff of power at Rampal plant might be a little more than that,” he said.
The plant, a joint venture between Bangladesh and India, will be set up with 70 percent commercial loans from private sources. “This 70 per cent loan will determines the power tariff,” Sinha said, adding that days of cheap power are getting over.
