Ten months after the power purchase agreement was signed, there still has been no tangible progress in the construction of the country’s first 60MW wind turbine power plant in Cox’s Bazar.
The agreement to build the renewable energy plant, signed amid much fanfare, was touted as a major move forward for Bangladesh.
Energy Adviser to the Prime Minister Tawfiq-e-Elahi Chowdhury, when the deal was inked, called the project a “milestone in the country’s power generation history.”
At the signing ceremony, State Minister for Power Nasrul Hamid said the wind energy plant marked the Bangladeshi energy sector’s “entry into a new era.”
After the deal was signed, US-DK Green Energy Managing Director Zahurul Islam Khan told the Dhaka Tribune that commercial operations would be started within 10 months.
Yet key feasibility assessments had still not taken place nearly a year after the agreement was signed.
“Now we are mapping wind resources on the south-east side of the entrance to the Maheshkhali Channel and the north-west side of Buckhali River within the coastal belt of the Bay of Bengal – about 5km from Cox’s Bazar town – to assess the possibility of power generation together with Danish wind-turbine company, Vestas,” Zahurul yesterday told the Dhaka Tribune.
Wind mapping is supposed to take place before signing a power purchase agreement, said a Power Development Board (PDB) official, who asked not to be named. He said the contract seemed unusual.
Zahurul said: “We hope that the company [Vestas] will give a result within a few months. We will then start construction work on the plant.”
“We have already sought one more year from the PDB to start commercial operations,” he added.
PDB Chairman Shahinul Islam Khan said the tenure of the contract was under consideration.
On May 15 last year, the PDB and US-DK Green Energy Ltd, a joint venture company, signed a power purchase agreement to build a wind energy plant under the independent power producer (IPP) mode.
According to the agreement for the wind turbine plant, the PDB will buy electricity from the company for the next 18 years at the rate of $0.12 per kilowatt-hour. The contract basis will be “no electricity, no payment.”
The $120m project cost will be carried by different international and local lenders.
US-DK Green Energy Ltd is a joint venture between US-based Taylor Engineering LLC, Denmark-based ph-consulting group and Bangladesh-based Multiplex Green Energy Ltd.
