Repair power plants
Suggest analysts urging shutting down rental and quick rental plants
Stressing the need to repair and modernise existing power plants to meet power deficits, speakers at a roundtable yesterday demanded that the government shuts down rental and quick rental power plants.
A weekly magazine, Shaptahik, organised the roundtable, “Power situation: About rental-quick rental”, in the capital's BIAM Foundation.
The government had to provide Tk 28,000 crore in yearly subsidies to get 1,000 MW of power from the rental and quick rental power plants, putting huge pressure on the country's economy, said Engineer BD Rahmatullah at the roundtable.
Another speaker, Kallol Mostofa, said the government could have generated 4,000 to 4,500 MW of power from the existing plants through some effective steps.
These include repairing existing plants, modernising thermal power plants and exploring for new gas fields using Bangladesh Petroleum Exploration and Production Company Ltd (Bapex), he said.
Government statistics say that the power deficit on June 14, 2009 was 700 MW. However, it was possible to generate an additional 707 MW of power by repairing the faulty power plants instead of going for rental ones, he added.
Prof Anu Muhammad said the government had to keep the second highest allocation in the proposed budget for the FY 2012-13 for payment of interests of loans taken for the rental power plants.
The electricity bill per unit rose to Tk 4 at present from around Tk 2 when the Awami League-led government assumed office. Moreover, the government has been planning to raise it to Tk 6, he said.
He added that using Bapex to explore and extract gas from only two blocks of the Bay of Bengal could meet the country's power demands for the next two decades.
Columnist Syed Abul Maksud suggested forming a high powered citizens' committee, comprising experts and government officials, to find a better solution for the crisis.
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