Anisul Islam Noor :The country is not getting 500MW of electricity in full capacity due to transmission overload at Farakka-Baharampur transmission line and transmission system loss, sources of Power Grid Company Bangladesh Limited (PGCB) said. For filling the gap, the cabinet purchase committee of Bangladesh recently approved a proposal to purchase another 30MW to 50MW electricity from open market.India has charged Rs 5.5, equivalent to Tk 6.49, as the price of each unit or kilowatt-hour of electricity of 100 MW power of Tripura, just double of its generation cost. Not only that, the contract terms would require Bangladesh to make the payment in US dollar.In that case, the import cost from India, would exceed 2.5 times Bangladesh’s generation cost [which is Tk 2.5 per unit] for using natural gas.Professor Anu Muhammad and Professor Shamshul Alam told The New Nation that Bangladesh has to pay higher price for Indian electricity than the Indian market prices.Expressing dissatisfaction, they also said when Bangladesh cannot utilize its domestic generation capacity and many power plants are sitting idle, at that time the power import in higher price is totally unnecessary.India is now supplying 450MW to 470MW of electricity on an average instead of agreed 500MW to Bangladesh due to shortage of electricityat Farakka-Baharampur transmission point.According to the power division proposal, the country has been importing 500MW of electricity from India since October 2013, cost of an average Tk 6 per unit including transmission charge, through grid inter-connectivity between Baharampur in India and Bheramara in Bangladesh.Bangladesh received 250 MW of electricity through NVVN and the remaining 250 MW from Power Trading Company India Ltd (PTC), according to the agreement.The country has been receiving 30-50 MW of electricity less due to subsidiary consumption at the generating station and losses during transmission, said the power division in its proposal.Later, a decision was made last year at the seventh meeting of the joint steering committee, which was formed under the agreement signed between Bangladesh and India on electricity cooperation since 2010, to purchase 30-50 MW more electricity from the Indian private sector.According to the Power division proposal, the average charge of the agent will be around Tk 0.05 per kwh and the lowest cost will be over Tk one crore and the highest will be over Tk 2 crore for a year for the import of 30-50 MW of electricity from India.Bangladesh Power Development Board (BPDB) will arrange limited scale tendering between two Indian power generation firms- NVVN and Power Trading Corporation of India Limited (PTC).After floating a tender, the Indian firm will appoint a trading agent which will purchase power form the Indian open market and supply to Bangladesh only for a year.Indian’s state of Tripura imported heavy equipment of this power plant through Bangladesh, while special road was constructed here to give prevalence to Tripura’s need.The exorbitant price charged by India drew sharp criticism in Bangladesh as the exporting country completely disregarded the gesture of not charging the transit fees by the importing country.Bangladeshi negotiators also drew the criticism for agreeing to import electricity at high price when India had little option to export Tripura’s 200 MW of power surplus after commissioning of its Palatana plant.Until Bangladesh agreed to import power from Tripura, India’s state run NTPC found it unrealistic to use the full capacity of its Palatana power plant.Nasrul Hamid told a news briefing on Tuesday that Bangladesh would import another 100MW of power from Tripura using the same trans-border transmission line.India, its media reported, is too eager to export power to Bangladesh from the surplus generation potentials in Tripura and Meghalaya.Asked why Bangladesh agreed to import electricity at such a high price when India had no option but to export to Bangladesh, Nasrul Hamid told The New Nation, ‘We are indebted to India for the support it lent in 1971.’ ‘Yes, we also helped India at times, ‘he said hinting at charging no transit fees for the shipment of the plant equipment from West Bengal to Tripura.By enhancing interconnection capacity of Bangladesh-India existing power grid, the government has taken initiative to import additional 500 megawatt (MW) electricity from India by June 2018. “A project of Enhancing Capacity of Existing Bangladesh (Bheramara) – India (Bahorompur) Grid Interconnection (500MW) is under implementation,” State Minister for Power, Energy and Mineral Resources Nasrul Hamid said.He said the government would construct HVDC station having capacity of 500-MW under the project, which would require two years, adding, that currently Bangladesh is importing 500-MW electricity from India and more initiatives underway.Tremendous success in power sector attained from doubling power generation capacity because of the visionary and undaunted leadership of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina that pulled out the nation from the abyss of darkness caused by load shedding, Nasrul said.He said the government led by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina enhanced the country’s power generation capacity to 14, 077 MW from 3,268 MW in 2009 with around 75 percent of the population having access to electricity.”The nation has witnessed a continued turnaround in recovering from chronic energy crisis as the government has already brought 75 per cent people under electricity coverage and sincere efforts and timely initiatives along with relentless monitoring helped a lot to get rid of load- shedding,” Nasrul said.He said, “Present government has set a target to generate 24,000-MW electricity by 2021, and 40,000 MW by 2030 aimed at bringing all the citizens of the country under electricity service.”
