Electricity production at Rampal plant likely to face further disruption amid dollar crisis

The coal-fired Rampal Power Plant, which was kept shut for a month until Wednesday last week amid a shortage of coal, is likely to see further disruption in electricity generation if the government fails to come up with a sufficient amount of dollars to import the key raw material, officials said. 

"Continuation of power generation at the power station largely depends on the LC opening situation," said Subhash Chandra Pandey, project director of the Bangladesh-India Friendship Power Company Limited that implements the Rampal Power Plant. 

"As per the ongoing shipments and our contracts with the suppliers, we don't see any possibility of disruption for the next two months. However, if a sufficient amount of dollars cannot be ensured for coal imports, production might be interrupted in the hot summer," he said while talking to reporters at his office at Rampal in Bagerhat.

"We have no local substitute of coal that can be suitable for the plant machines," he noted.

After the month-long closure, the first unit of 1,320MW Rampal Power Plant – officially known as Maitree Super Thermal Power Project – resumed partial operation on Wednesday night and was supplying around 400MW of electricity as of Thursday noon, officials said. 

The unit of the under-construction power plant in Bagerhat, which started electricity supply to the national grid on 17 December last year, was shut down on 14 January this year for an interruption in coal imports caused by a delayed payment. The unit requires around 5,000 tonnes of coal each day to run in full capacity. 

Prior to the closure, a total of 1.50 lakh tonnes of coal was imported, according to the Bangladesh India Friendship Power Company officials. The implementing Bangladesh-India joint venture firm had the plan to import 3 lakh tonnes of coal for the commissioning phase. It also signed a contract to import 6 million tonnes of coal in the next three years.

"A ship carrying 30,000 tonnes of coal arrived in the country on 9 February and another one with 50,000 tonnes is due on 18 February," Anwarul Azim, deputy general manager of the company, told reporters.

In 2013, the Bangladesh Power Development Board signed an agreement with its Indian counterpart to establish the much-talked-about coal-fired power plant with an aim to produce cost-effective electricity. According to the initial estimates, the cost of electricity production for this plant will be around Tk7.5 per unit.

"The cost of production now hovers between Tk13 and 14 per unit," Subhash Chandra Pandey said, blaming the higher prices of imported coal behind the hike in production cost. 

"If coal prices fall in the global market, the cost of electricity production at the plant will go down," he added. 

The estimated cost for the implementation of the Rampal Power Plant project is $2 billion. Some 83% of the project has so far been implemented, according to official documents. The physical progress of the project was hampered by the Covid-19 pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine war. The authorities concerned, however, are hopeful that the implementation cost will not cross the estimates. ***