Rental power plants

There was a report published in The Daily Star that refers to Mr. Debajit Das, Managing Director (Asia) of UK based Aggreko Co. which is operating a 40 MW diesel powered rental power plant in Khulna since June last. Mr. Das believes that Bangladesh would have to rely on the rental power system as the best short-term solution for the next few years until it could bring some large power projects online. Reasonably, the company is interested to expand its business in Bangladesh and outlined the details it can do to provide extra power for a term as short as one day, like Beijing Olympics and US presidential inauguration. According to him, Aggreko can quickly mobilize installing and supplying 200 MW plant in just one month if the plant site is ready.
The 40 MW Khulna plant is Aggreko's first venture in Bangladesh. It is learnt that there are 50 small diesel generator sets in the plant that run on costly diesel fuel. It is not very difficult to guess what may be the generation cost of power from this plant in addition to its environmental impact. There is no doubt that our country is in serious power crisis that will aggravate in the coming days. But we need power for our domestic, commercial, industrial and agricultural needs and the cost of power is an important matter for us. The last caretaker government, being temporary in nature, also took temporary measures to overcome power shortage. But the present political government must not think that way. It must take the decision considering the long-term benefit of the country. Without draining money for the costly rental power plants, the government should go for land based large power projects. This will take 2-3 years and we are to go through the painful period. For the greater national interest we must endure that sufferings.