The government's capacity payments to private gas-fired power plants are feared to surge significantly for its failure to purchase power due to gas crisis.
Sources said five new facilities with the total generation capacity of 2,673 megawatt have either completed construction or are nearing completion to initiate test runs and then come into operation.
Of the plants, two are owned by the private sector and three by the public sector.
The plants include a 718-MW Reliance-JERA joint venture (JV) gas-fired power plant and 590-MW Anwara Power Plant of the local United Group.
The JV between India's Reliance Power and Japan's JERA has completed construction of its power plants and now carrying out test runs.
Anwara 590 MW Power Plant of United Group has almost completed constructions, said sources.
Two public-sector plants - 156MW Ghorashal 3rd Unit and 409MW Ghorashal 4th Unit - remained idle after completing work due to inadequate gas, according to the Bangladesh Power Development Board (BPDB).
Another publicly-owned 800MW Rupsa Power Plant has completed around 80 per cent of the work.
The BPDB has already started counting capacity payments on new plants as it often fails to buy power from Summit's Meghnaghat 583MW and Unique Meghnaghat's 584MW plants.
Although the duo have started commercial operation recently, the BPDB very rarely keep them operational at one go due to gas crisis and bottlenecks in power transmission systems.
The recent liquefied natural gas (LNG) regasification setback caused from the cyclone Remal has aggravated the gas supply crisis.
The Summit LNG Terminal, which was hit by a stray broken floating pontoon at Moheshkhali in the Bay of Bengal during the cyclone, is now shut, said a senior Petrobangla official.
Dozens of gas-fired plants are now kept idle due to gas crisis and the BPDB has been counting capacity payment on them.
Amid the already surplus generation capacity and limitations in power transmission infrastructure, energy experts warn that this will exacerbate the burden of capacity charges on consumers.
The government paid a total of around Tk 1.05 trillion as capacity payments to power plant owners up to August 2023, according to state minister for power, energy and mineral resources Nasrul Hamid.
With the addition of new plants, sources say this amount is likely to burgeon further.
Contacted for comment, energy advisor of the Consumers Association of Bangladesh (CAB) Professor M Shamsul Alam called for the immediate cancellation of power purchase agreements that have exceeded their terms.
He argued that private sector power plant owners have already profited largely from their investments, as most have received extensions on their plants.
"We don't need too many power plants to incur hefty capacity payments every year," he added.
Energy expert Prof Mohammad Tamim accused a vested interest group of inflating power demand forecast.
This inflated demand, according to Prof Tamim, a former special assistant to a caretaker government, led to the installation of more power plants than necessary, resulting in huge capacity payments.
azizjst@yahoo.com