Energy Bangla

The government is formulating a fresh Power System Master Plan in four years after it made the previous one as a number of major ‘factors’ have changed including the possibility of utilising domestic coal for power generation.
Tokyo Electric Power Company or TEPCO is preparing the Power System Master Plan 2015 funded by the Japan International Cooperation Agency or Jica, officials said.
Jica would submit the final draft on the proposed PSMP by December 2015, Jica chief representative Mikio Hataeda told New Age on Tuesday on the sideline of the first technical seminar on the proposed PSMP.
State minister for power, energy and mineral resources Nasrul Hamid chaired the seminar where power division secretary Monwar Islam and other officials were present.
When asked, what prompted the authorities concerned to go for a fresh PSMP in four years, he said, a number of factors considered in the PSMP 2010 were changed significantly.
It would not be possible to utilise the domestic coal in power generation in a few years due to the denial of the locals of the country’s coal deposit areas, he said.
Besides, the demand for electricity was increasing at a higher rate than the PSMP 2010 estimated, Hataeda said.
Now the imported coal would be the main source of primary fuel to run the coal-fired power plants in Bangladesh, he said.
Fuel oil and domestic natural gas would get priority next to the imported coal in power generation, Hataeda said.
The PSMP 2010 suggested to install power plants with some 30,000MW, of which about 12,000MW capacity will run on domestic coal and the rest of the capacity will run on imported coal, officials said.
The government had to extract coal using the controversial open-pit method from at least two deposits to feed the power plants, they said.
The people of Phulbari in Dinajpur through series of bloody protest programmes rejected a government move to extract coal though open-pit method in 2006 and consequently the government postponed the project.
When asked, he said, the imported liquefied natural gas or LNG would be considered as a fuel mix with the domestic natural gas to extend the lifetime of the gas supply.
The country now has a reserve of less than 14 trillion cubic feet or tcf of natural gas which would be able to maintain a supply by one tcf a year until 2018, officials said.
Now, the government wants to mix one billion cubic feet of LNG a day with the domestic gas to meet the demand of power plants and other consumers over longer period of time, they said.