Anisul Islam Noor :
Two underground sub-station projects of DPDC and DESCO for Dhaka city have been denied as the Planning Commission refused to approve such plans for their nearly five times higher costs than that of the usual ones.
The officials of the Ministry of Power, Energy and Mineral Resources feel proud for such a step to rich-country practice of having underground power-transmission system. The underground sub-station plans fell in complexity after Planning Commission gave negative opinion, they said.
The Commission has sent back both the projects and asked the Power Division to rationalise the abnormally higher cost before seeking their approval.
Sources in the ministry said as per instructions from the government high-ups, Dhaka Power Distribution Company Limited (DPDC) and Dhaka Electric Supply Company Limited (DESCO) had taken up the two projects.
The state-owned DPDC has undertaken a Tk 1000 crore project and the DESCO another involving Tk 1100 crore for installation of two underground sub-stations at Karwanbazar and Gulshan in the city.
“We are forced to undertake the project as the Prime Minister has instructed the Power Division to install the power sub-stations in the capital underground,” a Power Division official said.
“The power-distributing agencies have to spend nearly five times higher cost than project costs for the overhead substation-installation schemes. Usually, we install overhead sub-stations in Bangladesh,” said the official, close to the project.
He said underground sub-station is highly technical which some developed Asian nations like Japan and Singapore have undertaken.
A Planning Commission official confirmed yesterday that they had sent back the project proposals of the DPDC and DESCO due to their higher costs and non-viability.
“The Project Evaluation Committee at the Commission has asked the Power Division to form a committee comprising experts from the DPDC, DESCO, IMED, PC and other agencies concerned to find details on the viability and to rationalise the cost of the two projects,” he said.
The Planning Commission official said the Net Present Value (NPV), Benefit-Cost Ratio (BCR) and Internal Rate of Returns (IRR) of both the projects showed that the project would not be viable financially.
