Two rental power deals signed
The Power Development Board yesterday signed contracts with two local companies to install two rental power plants with a capacity of 217 megawatt.
Summit Narayanganj Power Ltd will set up a 102MW power plant at Madanganj in Narayanganj and Khulna Power Company Ltd (unit 2) another 115MW plant at Goalpara in Khulna, according to the contracts.
The furnace oil-fired plants must be operational within 270 days of signing of the agreement.
The plants are likely to add electricity to the national grid from March 2011, just before the irrigation period, said PDB Chairman ASM Alamgir Kabir.
"The government is making quick decisions to ease the power crisis for a steady economic growth. We are going to procure electricity from these rental projects as part of the move," he said.
"We are likely to get 1,000 megawatt of electricity from the two plants in the next five years. We shall procure electricity directly from the two companies as per the agreements," he said at the signing ceremony at the PDB office.
The cabinet committee on economic affairs earlier approved a proposal to procure 1,000MW to 1,500MW from rental power projects urgently without any tender through waiving related provisions of the Public Procurement Regulation (PPR) and Public Procurement Act (PPA).
Both the PPR and PPA bar public procurement without floating open tender.
The PDB has to pay the two companies Tk 7.78 for a kilowatt of electricity per hour.
Rental power projects are different from the conventional ones as the contractors must own power plant equipment ready for installation and dismantling at short notice.
The contractors are not supposed to buy power plant equipment for just one particular project.
It makes such power projects costlier than the conventional ones. Besides, the cost of power generation also depends on the prices of furnace oil on the international market, said the PDB chairman.
Mohammad Azizul Islam, secretary of PDB, signed the contracts with ANM Tariqur Rashid, managing director of Summit Narayanganj Power Ltd, and Hasan Mahmood Raja, managing director of Khulna Power Company Ltd (unit 2) on behalf of their organisations.
Muhammed Aziz Khan, chairman of Summit Group, and Latif Khan, director of KPCL, were also present.
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