Bangladesh Power Development Board (BPDB) has taken an initiative to repower or upgrade some of the old power plants while shut down some others permanently in phases which will help increasing electricity generation and reducing generation cost, officials said.
Experts opined that the old power plants’ generation cost is high. As a result the average generation cost is also increasing. In this situation, Bangladesh Energy Regulatory Commission (BERC) on 8 March ordered to take necessary actions to increase generation capacity of old power plants.
BPDB Chairman Engineer Mohammad Belayet Hossain told Bangladesh Post, “We’ll repower the power plants that are capable of increasing their power generation capacity. However, some of the power plants are very old and not commercially viable. Those plants will be shut down permanently in phases.”
Officials said, the repowering works have already been started. Some old power plants’ generation capacity has increased. Generally, this type of power plants are being converted from simple cycle to combined cycle.
The simple cycle is an old technology and its fuel cost is high but generation capacity is lower than combined cycle technology. As a result, electricity generation capacity has increased around two times by using same amount of fuel.
Currently, the repowering work is ongoing in two units of Ghorashal and a power plant of Sylhet. The installed capacity of Ghorashal unit-1 and unit-2 are 110MW, now its derated capacity is 85MW. Its maintenance work is now ongoing. The third unit having installed capacity of 210MW is also under maintenance.
Its derated capacity is 170MW. Official expected that the three unit will go into operation this month. The unit-5 is also under maintenance, which will start its generation by next month.
However, unit-3 and unit-4 have already repowered and increased its generation capacity.
The generation capacity has decreased from 210MW to 115MW of 210MW Siddhirgonj power plant, which is being overhauling now.
Meanwhile, three coal-based power plants having total power geneartion capacity of 3,840 MW, are under construction.
Of them, the first unit with 660MW capacity of the Payra power plant started its generation on test basis. The second unit will go into operation, hopefully by June. The two units of the Rooppur nuclear power plant would start generation by 2023-2024.
BPDB official said that currently the country’s electricity demand is 9,000MW to 9,500MW, which will increase in summer and it may reached 14000MW.
`There are 136 power plants with total installed capacity of 19630MW of electricity and now it’s actual or derated capacity is 19107MW. Besides, 1160 MW of electricity is being imported from India and around 350MW of power is generated by renewable energy,’ according to BPDB.
BPDB sources said, it is not possible to generate 1959MW of electricity due to gas shortage. On the other hand, 164MW power is not being generated from hydropower plant due to low water level in Kaptai Lake. In addition, maintenance work is ongoing in some power plant. That’s why, a total of 788MW power is not generated from there. However, 6 power plant has already permanently shut down in 2018-2019 fiscal year.
