Payra power plant partly shut

Jun 14, 2023

A fuel shortage driven by the dollar crisis prompted the shutdown of a unit of the 1320MW coal-fired Payra power plant on Thursday, halving the supply of power from the country's largest power plant.

Payra power plant operates in two units, each producing 622MW.

AM Khurshedul Alam, chief executive officer of North-West Power Generation Company Limited, which owns the Payra power plant, confirmed the partial closure of the power plant.

‘With the coal we have in store, the other half of the power plant might run until June 3 or 4,’ he said, indicating the imminent complete closure of the power plant.

The government has not paid the Payra power plant since May 2022.

The power plant authorities allowed the government to have bills outstanding for six months, which ended in November, according to the power plant authorities.

The power plant authorities had said that the government needed to pay at least $296 million to keep the power plant in operation.

The government paid $30 million before the power plant was partially closed.

Khurshedul Alam said that the government made arrangements for paying another $70 million, with which he would try to open LC for importing coal.

‘It will take 25 days after the opening of LC for the coal to reach the plant,’ he said.

The partial closure of the Payra power plant is a grim reminder of Bangladesh's worsening dollar crisis, which forced the government to officially announce rotating power cuts in July last year.

The dollar crisis has already forced the 1320MW Rampal power plant, which has only one unit in operation, to suspend operations several times.

The 307MW Barishal power plant has also been operating at reduced capacity because of the coal crisis and its inability to buy fuel.

Bangladesh recorded 52MW load-shedding at its peak generation at 9:00am on Wednesday, with the production of 12046MW of electricity.

The peak load-shedding of 774MW was recorded at 10:00am on Wednesday against a demand of 9,190MW.

With an installed capacity of 24,143MW, excluding captive power, Bangladesh could not even generate 9,000MW demand at the time of peak load-shedding.

Bangladesh recorded 3,000MW of load-shedding after Cyclone Mocha hit this month.

In its extended outlook for the next five days, the Bangladesh Meteorological Department predicted the temperature to increase, potentially raising power demand soon.

On Thursday, the maximum power demand was 12,700MW, according to the Power Grid Company of Bangladesh Limited.

On Thursday, the country's highest day temperature of 36.6C was recorded in Khulna.

In Dhaka, the highest day temperature was 33.6C.

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