Bangladesh
Rampal Power Plant Unit-1 of Rampal power plant to be commissioned commercially in October
Own Correspondent, Dhaka, August 31: Unit-1 of the 2660 MW Maitri Super Thermal Power Project at Rampal will be commercially commissioned in October. This will further increase the power generation capacity of the country. For this, all the necessary steps including successful synchronization with the national grid have already been completed.
In a major step to further strengthen India-Bangladesh power sector cooperation, Unit-1 of the 2660 MW Maitri Super Thermal Power Project was successfully synchronized on August 15, 2022, supplying 91.7 MW of power to the national grid. Built at an estimated cost of Tk 16,000 crore, the plant aims to generate a total of 1,320 MW of electricity in two units (660 MW each).
The Prime Ministers of Bangladesh and India are expected to jointly announce the completion of Unit-1 construction of the power plant during Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's visit to India in the first week of September 2022.
Construction of the mega infrastructure is in full swing, with the aim of commercializing the first unit of the centre by October this year and the second unit by March next year.
While talking to reporters at the project site, Project Director Subhash Chandra Pandey said that their plan is to run the first unit of the factory commercially by October this year.
He said the reliability test has already been completed.
He further said that had there been no impact of Covid-19, the commercial production of Unit-1 could have started much earlier. Because more than a year was wasted because of the Corona pandemic. Regarding the supply of coal for the power plant, he said about 50,000 metric tonnes of coal has already reached the central area, and two more ships loaded with coal are expected to arrive in September.
A long-term coal contract is already in process, but will take some time, the project director said. Apparently, to deal with environmental issues more judiciously, Pandey said, four huge sheds are being constructed, with a coal storage capacity of one million metric tonnes. Once these sheds are completed, it will be enough to run both units for three months of operation.
In response to another question, he said that the cost of generating electricity per unit from such plants depends on the price of imported coal and is also variable. It depends on the external coal price and also on the market price of imported coal. He said that coal will be imported from Indonesia and South Africa for the operation of the centre.
