THE government continues to sign unsolicited power purchase agreement unconstrained with private companies to buy expensive electricity from solar parks. It has once again signed a contract on Sunday for a 30-megawatt plant to be commissioned by next year. Under the contract, Intraco Solar Power Limited will supply electricity from the solar park to state-run Bangladesh Power Development Board (BPDB) at Tk 12.80 or 16 US cents per unit or kilowatt-hour for 20 years.
Besides this, BPDB also signed contracts with three private companies – Southern Solar Power Limited, HDFC SinPower Ltd and HDISUN-Power Point & Haor Bangla-Korea Green Energy Ltd – between February 2016 and January 2017 to buy solar electricity at Tk 13.6 or $0.17 per unit for 20 years. The government seems to be hell bent to buy and supply electricity at any cost, but the point is – it continues to fail to regulate the per unit price to keep it within the affordable range of the common people. That said – the combined capacity of five solar parks is 332MW, which is likely to put a huge financial burden on the Power Board due to the pricy electricity.
The government’s commitment to introduce renewable sources of power to meet the growing demand is praiseworthy, but it should not come at such a high cost. According to BPDB sources, the country’s average power generation cost currently stands at Tk 5.58 per unit and how financially feasible is it to buy it for double the price? Moreover, this expensive electricity will double and then triple disproportionately in the next twenty years.
Needs to be mentioned – in the past three years or so, a good number of private companies were in discussion with the government to set up grid-tied solar parks, following a number of contract signing ceremonies – not even a single solar park has been commissioned so far.
Such hasty attempts to make the country self-sufficient in power generation overnight appears more like running after white elephant projects. However, we expect authorities concerned to be more pragmatic and judicious in terms of procuring electricity at reasonable price at par with reality.
