The 200 MW plant is being built by United Mymensingh Power Ltd and when completed in June 2018, it will feed much needed electricity to the national grid. The order with Wärtsilä was booked in September 2017.

The government of Bangladesh is making a strong effort to increase the number of households with access to electricity. As of 2016, only 76 percent of the country’s houses were connected to the grid, and the aim is to increase this to 98 percent by the year 2021. There is, therefore, an urgent need for new, reliable power capacity, and Wärtsilä’s proven ability to deliver generating equipment on a fast-track basis and to provide local support for the installations, continues to be a crucial factor in the award of these contracts.

“We have an implementation time for this project of just nine months, so having an equipment partner who we can trust to deliver on schedule is of immense value to us. We already have three other plants running on Wärtsilä generating equipment, hence we have good experience with the company and know that we can rely on their high quality engines,” commented Mr Moinuddin Hasan Rashid, Managing Director of United Group.

The new plant will operate on a total of 21 Wärtsilä 32 engines running on heavy fuel oil (HFO). Delivery of the equipment is scheduled for January 2018.

With this latest order, Wärtsilä’s total installed base in Bangladesh will be in excess of 3900 MW.