The government has undertaken a move to set up an 800-megawatt (MW) combined cycle power plant in Khulna to meet the growing demand of power in the country, reports BSS.
The 800 MW plant will be built on the abandoned land of Khulna Newsprint Mills Limited (KNM).
"The government has undertaken a series of projects to increase the country's power generation capacity as we have targeted to generate 24,000 MW electricity by 2021," State Minister for Power, Energy and Mineral Resources Nasrul Hamid told the news agency on Sunday.
He said the proposed power plant will help reduce system loss of electricity as consumers will get more reliable power from their nearby source.
An official said a draft project by the Power Division, titled 'Construction of Roopsa 800 MW combined cycle power plant', has already been reviewed by Planning Commission and it is likely to be placed before the Executive Committee of the National Economic Council (ECNEC) meeting on Tuesday.
He said the North West Power Generation Company Limited (NWPGCL) under the Power Division has been assigned to implement the project by June 2022 at an estimated cost of over Tk 84.986 billion (Tk 8,498.64 crore). Out of the total project cost, the official said, the Asian Development Bank (ADB), the Islamic Development Bank (IDB) and Japan Fund for Poverty Reduction (JFPR) are expected to provide more than Tk 59.878 billion (Tk 5,987.87 crore) as project assistance, over Tk 500 million (Tk 50 crore) will come from the organisation's own fund while the rest over Tk 24.607 billion ( Tk 2,460.77 crore) will be given by the government.
The project targets improving energy security in Bangladesh. It will increase availability of efficient and cleaner energy by developing a state-of-the-art power plant with 800 MW generation capacity using cleaner and highly efficient power generation technologies.
The Planning Commission official said the project also envisages the construction of associated natural gas supply and power transmission infrastructure facilities, as well as strengthening the institutional capacity and overall business process of the project's executing agency, North-West Power Generation Company Limited (NWPGCL), to efficiently plan and operate power plants. He said the power plant will be built on some 50 acres of abandoned land at the Khulna Newsprint Mills where natural gas will be used as the initial energy while HSD as an alternate energy.
According to the sources at the Power Division and the Planning Commission, the government has already set a target to reach electricity to every household by 2021 side by side reducing load shedding by generating some 24,000 MW of power by that year.
To materialise that goal, the government is implementing various short-term, mid-term and long-term plans and the project for setting up 800 MW combined cycle power plant has been drafted in line with those plans.
According to the draft project proposal, the main project operations include setting up gas turbine generating set with all auxiliaries, steam turbine generating set with all auxiliaries, heat recovery steam generating set, installation of power transformer 16/230 KV and 400 MVA, 11/230 KV, 200 MVA.
