India not supplying electricity at full capacity promised

India is not supplying electricity at 'full grid capacity' to Bangladesh, prompting the government authorities to increase dependence on high-cost oil-fired rental and quick-rental power plants to meet a mounting demand.
"Indian authority is supplying electricity less than our grid capacity," Bangladesh Power Development Board (BPDB) Chairman Md Abduhu Ruhullah told The Financial Express.
According to BPDB statistics, Bangladesh got 418 megawatts (MW) of electricity during day peak and 390 MW during evening peak time Sunday from high-voltage direct current (HDVC) interconnector from India.
The country got 402 megawatts (MW) of electricity during the daytime peak hours and 368 MW during the evening peak time Saturday through the interconnector.
India is contracted to supply a total of 500MW power to Bangladesh.
But rarely has there been electricity supply over 450 MWs since the start of cross-border transmission in October 2013, the BPDB statistics showed.
Average electricity supply from India has been around 400MW in the past several months. And the receipt was even below this mark during April when the country was parched amid record-highest temperatures.
The BPDB chairman said Bangladesh can get around 470 MWs of electricity at the maximum from India due to bottlenecks in the existing transmission system
"We can get maximum 470MW from India due to bottlenecks to the existing transmission system," the chairman said.
The transmission and system losses were eating up at least 6.0 per cent of the total electricity supply from India, he pointed out.
He said steps, however, had been taken to import the remaining 30MW electricity from the Indian open market.
BPDB statistics show almost all the expensive oil-fired rental, quick-rental and independent power producer (IPP) plants were operative Sunday as not a single megawatt of electricity generation by the oil-fired plants was hampered.
However, 2,007MW electricity generation was hampered Sunday due to technical glitches and overhauling in power plants and 628 MW due to gas- supply shortfall. Such lapses are also causing increased dependence on oil-fired power plants for electricity generation, the statistics spelled out
The technical glitches in the power plants and the gas crisis were not any readily resolvable crisis and getting the additional electricity would be time-consuming, said a senior official of the Power Division under the Ministry of Power, Energy and Mineral Resources (MPEMR).
But electricity supply from India could be increased overnight if India supplied more electricity to the transmission line for Bangladesh, he added.
Bangladesh's electricity-transmission system was, however, ready for transmission of the full 500MW electricity from India, Managing Director of the state-owned Power Grid Company of Bangladesh Ltd (PGCB) Masum-Al-Beruni told the FE.
Officials said Bangladesh started importing around 175 megawatts of electricity from India on October 5, 2013 when Indian Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh and Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina inaugurated the electricity interconnectivity between the two neighbouring countries.
This electricity flow from India into Bangladesh is South Asia's first-ever HVDC interconnection.
Bangladesh started importing 50 MWs of electricity from India on an experimental basis on September 27, 2013.
The Indian electricity is being fed to Bangladesh's national power grid and from there it is being supplied to the end-users.
The state-owned BPDB is purchasing the electricity from the Indian NTPC Vidyut Vyapar Nigam Ltd (NVVN), a wholly-owned subsidiary of India's National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC).
Electricity tariff is being fixed by the Indian Central Electricity Regulatory Commission (CERC) from time to time.
The price is around Tk 6.0 per unit (1kilowatt hour) on average, which is much below the average electricity-generation cost at an oil-fired power plant-around Tk 13-18 per unit.
The BPDB has signed contracts to import 250MW electricity from the Indian central government's unallocated quota and the remaining 250 MW from the Indian open market through the Power Trading Corporation.
Bangladesh has deal to purchase electricity from India for 25 years.
The country's overall electricity generation is now hovering around 6,200 megawatts against the known demand for over 7,500 MW.