Bangla give permission to install rental power plants

Dhaka: The council of advisers’ purchase committee on Tuesday approved a power division proposal to award contracts to two private companies for the installation of two rental plants with a total capacity of 90MW.


The committee, headed by the finance adviser, Mirza Azizul Islam, however, set two conditions that the agreements would need to include the issues of fuel efficiency of the power plant and a cap on the scalable portion of the power price.


The division placed the proposal to award a contract to the Youth Spinning Mills to set up an 80MW plant at Shahjibazar on a build-own-operate scheme and to the joint venture of the Desh Energy and the Cambridge Energy Waste Management Limited for the installation of a 10MW plant at Kumargaon.


The committee approved the price offers of the companies for the installation of the plants.
The Power Development Board has recently selected the Youth Spinning Mills and the Desh Energy to set up the proposed plants with offers of Tk 2.26 and Tk 2.36 for a unit of electricity respectively.


The board will buy power for 15 years from the plants that will start operation by 2008. The companies will set up readymade second hand power plants.


Sources attending the committee meeting said some of the members wanted to know from the power division officials whether they had any criteria of the fuel efficiency of the plants or how much gas the plants could consume.


As the power plants will be second hand, they are likely to consume more gas to generate power, the committee observed.


It also wanted to know whether the power price, which would vary in the case of increase in gas price or import of spare parts, would have any cap.


As the power officials said such issues were not included, the committee asked the power division to include the issues in the agreements with the selected companies.


The previous BNP-led, four-party government initially took initiatives to set up seven rental power plants with 260MW capacity on an emergency basis to tackle power crisis, but the interim government re-tendered six power plants scrapping earlier tender procedure and gave go-ahead to a 20MW plant at Bogra.


The power division, however, suspended the tender procedure of three power plants for lack of gas at the plant sites and approved setting up two power plants at Shahjibazar and Kumargaon. The power board will re-tender for the 50MW plant at Fenchuganj.