Power generation halves amid coal crisis

The country has a power generation capacity of more than 7000 MW from coal powered plants. However, power generation from coal powered plants has declined to less than 3000 MW.

Relevant people say the power plants are struggling to maintain a supply as per the demand due to the pending bills, dollar crisis and complications over tender.

As a result, two of the seven coal power plants of the country were forced to shut their operations. Besides, power generation has been greatly hampered in four other coal powered plants.

Despite objections from the environmentalists, the Awami League government opted for coal powered plants citing cheaper production cost.

However, these plants failed to go into production within the stipulated time. The Power Division could not clear the bills regularly after these plants went into production. As a result, these plants are under pressure now with mounting pending bills. The interim government is increasing payments for pending bills in phases.

Sources in the Power Development Board (PDB) say the demand for electricity is comparatively low as the temperature is falling due to season change. The highest demand at night is 13000 MW at the moment.

Efforts is being made to increase production from oil powered plants at a higher cost due to the decline in production at coal powered plants. Despite that, the demand is still higher than the supply. So the PDB is being forced to impose load shedding in many places outside Dhaka. The country witnessed the highest 700 MW load shedding per hour on Sunday.

The three units of the Barapukuria Coal Based Thermal Power Plant, the lone plant in the country which produces coal from its own mine, have a power generation capacity of 525 MW per day together.

However, two of these mostly remain closed due to the coal crisis. At the moment, two of these units are in production. These two units generate 220-230 MW electricity together. 

The plant needs 5,000 tonnes of coal per day to become fully operational. This power plant now supplies half the demand. The remaining six power plants are run on imported coal. The PDB is struggling to arrange the money for imports.

The Matarbari Coal Power Plant in Maheshkhali of Cox’s Bazar has been completely shut down since 31 October. The 1200-MW-power-plant is likely to resume production by next March. One of the two units of this power plant is scheduled to return to production next month.

Speaking to Prothom Alo, Monowar Hossain Majumdar, supervising engineer of the power plant, said this plant would remain closed until coal import resumes.

The Coal Power Generation Company sources say coal import has been delayed as the prevailing tender-related complications have been taken into the cognisance of court to reach a settlement. Already the purchase order to supply 3.5 million tonnes of coal for a year has been issued.

The power plant needs 300,000 tonnes of coal every month. The two units of the power plant went into commercial production on 18 December last year and 28 August this year respectively.

However, the power plant is yet to be granted any bill. It could not pay the bills as it does not have any Power Procurement Agreement with the PDB, which is likely to be signed soon.

Apart from these, production at the 307-MW-power-plant in Amtali of Barguna has been completely shut down since 27 October for maintenance works. It will take two months to resume power generation at this plant.

Indian power company Adani and PDB have been exchanging letters concerning the due bills. However, the issue has not been resolved. According to Adani’s claims more than 850 million (85 crore) dollars are due. 

The Adani Group is putting in pressure for repayment of the unpaid bills of the power plants. Adani closed down one of the units on last 31 October.

More than 700 megawatts of electricity is being supplied from the remaining unit. If the matter of arrear bills repayment is not resolved, Adani can close this one as well.

The power plant of Adani is located in Godda area in the Indian state of Jharkhand. This coal-based power plant has a capacity of 1,600 megawatt.

There are two units with the capacity of 800 megawatts each in this plant. Bangladesh is supposed to buy the electricity produced there for 25 years. The first unit started producing electricity commercially in April last year while the second unit went into production in June the same year.

Two officials from PDB told Prothom Alo, the amount of bills repayment has been increased than before. Their electricity bills was USD 87 million (8.7 crore) last month.

Meanwhile, USD 97 million (9.7 crore) has been paid including the arrear. Earlier, the bills used to be paid through the Sonali Bank. An initiative has been taken to pay the bills through letter of credit (LC) at the Krishi Bank now. Ten million (1 crore) dollars was to be paid on Monday.

PDB chairman Md Rezaul Karim told Prothom Alo that it’s not possible to pay the total dues at once. Apart from that there’s no steady supply of dollars according to the demand. So, the amount of arrear bills repayment is being increased in phases.

Since it went into production, Payra 1320 Megawatt Thermal Power Plant in Patuakhali has been supplying electricity uninterruptedly according to the demand. However, the plant had to keep the production of electricity closed for a month last year as the bills for coal went into dues for the crisis of dollars. Right now, this plant is in production as the only coal-based power plant running on full capacity. This plant is running under Bangladesh and China’s joint initiative.

After ten years of the construction of Rampal 1320 Megawatt Power Plant being started, one of the units has gone into production. Afterwards, this plant has remained closed several times so far. Among the reasons there were technical errors and crisis in coal purchase for lack of dollars as well. Right now, less than 600 megawatts of electricity is being supplied from one unit of this power plant built jointly by Bangladesh and India.

Meanwhile, one of the units of SS Power 1224 Megawatt Power Plant in Banshkhali of Chattogram is running at present. Currently, it’s producing 400 to 460 megawatt of electricity. The other unit is left closed for quite a few days. Since the arrear bills are piling up, the coal supply cannot be retained to normalcy. There’s not enough coal at the plant to run both units. 

If the coal-based power plants cannot be kept running, the demand of electricity will soar in next March and the situation might get even worse. In this regard, former professor at BUET Ijaz Hossain told Prothom Alo that the dependency on import has increased. Now arrangements must be made to collect the dollars required for coal import and to repay the bills.

* The report, originally published in the print and online edition of Prothom Alo, has been rewritten in English by Ashish Basu and Nourin Ahmed Monisha