A ship carrying 20,000 tonnes of coal, the first lot of it for the country's first mega 1320-MW Payra coal-fired Power Plant, has left from Indonesia. It is expected that the ship will reach Payra in Patuakhali by the end of this month. Through this, a major work is going to be competed for the power plant, a top official said.
‘If work goes on without any disruption, the first 660-megawatt (MW) unit will start generating electricity by this December, and the second unit with same capacity, is expected go into operation by June 2020,’ officials hope. Project Director, Shah Abdul Maula, told Bangladesh Post ‘The first shipment of coal has been sent from Indonesia on September, 9 night. We hope the ship with 19,750 tonnes of coal will reach Bangladesh by September, 18 or 19.’
‘Meanwhile, the construction work of the power plant is going on at a faster pace. An estimated 86 percent work has been completed of the project and hopefully the operation of the plant can be started on schedule,’ he added. Bangladesh-China Power Company Ltd (BCPCL), a joint venture of Bangladesh's North-West Power Generation Company Ltd (NWPGCL) and China National Machinery Import and Export Corporation (CMC) are implementing the project at a cost of about $2 billion. The power plant is being built with financial support from China's Exim Bank.
The power plant would require around 12,000 tonnes of coal daily to generate electricity. BCPCL would import around 4 million tonnes of coal from Indonesia annually to run the power plant. Earlier, Bangladesh-China Power Company signed a deal with an Indonesian firm at a hotel in Dhaka on June, 17, 2019 to import the coal from the Southeastern Asian country for the power plant. The coal transportation agreement (CTA) was signed on June, 07, 2019.
The plant will use sub-bituminous coal, whose calorific value is 4700-5500 Kilo cal. This type of coal is chiefly abundant in Indonesia and Australia. The official said that all civil, structural work and equipment installation has been done for the first unit, and now pre-commissioning activities are going on before final commissioning. The installation work for the second unit is also going on fast.
According to NWPGCL, all major equipment for the second unit have reached the project site and the superstructure work is going on. The construction work for coal jetty, coal unloader, coal conveyor gallery, steel structure and civil construction work has already been done. Besides, the construction work of power block area, balance of plant (BOP) and water intake has been completed.
The government has also allocated 998.77 acres of land to the NWPGCL for implementing the project on a turnkey basis by using eco-friendly ultra-super critical technology.
According to the Power System Master Plan, the government plans to generate around 50 per cent of the country's overall electricity from coal. To implement the plan, the government will have to generate around 12,000 megawatts of electricity from coal by 2024, 20,000 MW by 2030, and 30,000 MW by 2041.
But the country now has only three coal-fired power plants with a total generation capacity of only 524 MW. The government has undertaken a number of coal-and LNG-based power plants across the country to generate 24,000 MW electricity by 2021, 40,000 MW by 2030 and 60,000 MW by 2041. Currently, the government is working on three major power generation hubs at Payra in Patuakhali, Maheshkhali and Matarbari in Cox's Bazar.
The 1,200 MW coal-fired power plant at Matarbari is expected to go into operation by 2023. On the other hand, work is going on to set up a 1320 MW power plant at Rampal in Bagerhat. Meanwhile, work to build a nuclear power plant at Rooppur in Pabna is underway.
