Payra Plant’s Temporary Closure: Govt counting on power plants under trial run

With the country's biggest power producer, Payra Power Plant, temporarily closing yesterday, the government is now looking at plants that are doing dry runs to ease load shedding.     

At 12:15pm yesterday, the Payra 1,320MW Thermal Power Plant was turned off due to coal shortage.

Officials said the next shipment of coal would reach the plant after June 25.

The first unit of the plant, with 660MW capacity, has been out of operation since May 25, and the countrywide power cuts have been frequent since then.

Power Division officials said they will increase power production from gas and furnace oil until June 13 to fill the gap left behind by the Payra Power Plant's second unit.  

"We are trying so that the current situation does not worsen, and it will improve after June 13," said Mohammad Hossain, director general of Power Cell.

He said from next week, Chattogram's SS Power, a subsidiary of SAlam Group, will start supplying electricity to the national grid on a trial basis.

Besides, Adani Power of India will increase its power supply, he added.

It has been supplying around 750MW daily since April 6. In recent times, the supply went over 1,000MW.

Hossain said, due to some transmission issues, they were unable to receive the total 1,496MW from the Adani Power. "It will be solved by next week."

Yesterday, Power Division officials met Nasrul Hamid, state minister for power, energy and mineral resources, and informed him of a three-phase outline to improve the ongoing power situation.

In the last two weeks, the supply shortage was between 2,500MW and 3,000MW.

The country produced 13,859MW against the demand of 15,700MW as of 9:00pm yesterday.

Amid the heatwave, people across the country are suffering immensely as power cuts are now more frequent. Yesterday, in Dhaka there were outages of at least four to five hours on average and over eight to 10 hours in rural areas.

According to the daily production report of the Power Grid Company of Bangladesh, four power plants in Khulna and Chattogram with a combined production capacity of 1,365MW are on test runs.

Those are coal-fired SS Power, furnace oil-fired Khulna 330MW Power Plant, gas-fired Khulna 225MW Power Plant, and gas-fired Mirsharai 150MW Power Plant.

At least three of them have completed the reliability tests that require them to continuously run for 72 hours at full load, according to an official of the Power Division.

Mohammad Hossain said, "Regardless of the power plants' condition, the people will get electricity."

In a Facebook post yesterday, State Minister Nasrul Hamid regretted the situation.

"Before 2008, people were out of electricity for 16-18 hours a day. We have the capacity of producing 27,361MW, including captive power. We are capable of generating power as per demand. But due to the global fuel crisis and the devaluation of taka against dollar, imports of primary fuel have been affected," he wrote.