Summit Group, the country’s largest energy company, would start supplying 220MW of costly electricity to the national grid from its dual-fuel combined cycle Meghnaghat Power Company at the end of this month.
The initial production from the 335MW plant would come from diesel and the remaining 115MW is expected to come in July next with the completion of the combined cycle turbine, a group of reporters was told during a visit to the project site at Narsingdi yesterday.
The new supply in November would be almost one-fifth of the current supply shortage of electricity in the country.
Economic Relations Division organised the visit, apprising of the progress made on US$300m project, funded by DEG (Germany), FMO (Netherland), SCB (London) and IDCOL (Bangladesh), and letter of credit opening banks are Trust Bank, Brac Bank, Bank Asia and The City Bank Limited.
“We will able to supply electricity from the single-cycle plant by the end of November,” Summit Group Chairman Muhammed Aziz Khan told the visiting reporters.
He expected the government to ensure gas supply to the plant instead of inefficient ones to facilitate supplying low cost electricity to the grid. “We’ll be supplying from the power plant at a time when Dhaka city is facing a sudden deficit.”
The cost of electricity from the plant will now be above Tk11 per unit as it would run on diesel until the plant gets gas supply, officials visiting the site said.
The price is much higher than the average power generation cost of Tk6.28 per unit. The price would, however, come down to Tk2.03 per unit as soon as the gas supply starts.
Bangladesh Power Development Board Member (Company Affairs) Engr Tamal Chakraborty said the BPDB will have to provide a subsidy of Tk7.50 per unit for the generation of electricity from the plant till it uses diesel as the input.