Bangladesh Power Development Board plans soon to invite international tenders to set up four more coal fired power plants in the country, to generate in total around 2000 MWe. Its intention is to safeguard future power supply at affordable cost.
The new power plants will be burning imported coal. Alamgir Kabir, chairman of BPDB, said the new plants will be built near the sea and river estuary coasts in Chittagong, Khulna and Munshiganj to facilitate transport of the imported coal. The new build is a component of the government’s move to augment electricity generation and diversify the country’s energy sources under its mid term planning, against the backdrop of dwindling natural gas reserves. in the short term it is building diesel and oil fired power plants.
It is expected that the electricity tariff for the new plants would be lower than those of oil based power plants. “Initially” said mr kabir, ” the coal fired power plants would run with imported coal. Local coal will be utilised once the country starts extracting local coal significantly.”
