M Azizur Rahman

The government has planned to set up coal-fired power plants at the mine mouth of every coalmine in a major drive under its long-term plan to divert its energy sources from natural gas to coal and resolve the country's nagging electricity crisis, officials said Sunday.

These plants would be in addition to the six planned coal-fired power plants to be installed in different strategic locations near the coastal areas, a senior energy ministry official said.

He said the mine-mouth coal-fired power plants would be set up on the basis of a guideline to be provided in the national coal policy.

The long-pending national coal policy is now in the final stage of approval.

The country has five coalmines having reserves of around 2.90 billion tonnes but coal extraction is now limited to only one mine at Barapukuria in northern Dinajpur.

Country's lone coal-fired power plant is located at the mine-mouth of the Barapukuria underground coalmine having electricity generation capacity of 250 mw.

But the plant can produce only 65mw of electricity due to technical glitches.

The state-owned - Power Development Board (PDB) - has recently placed a proposal to the power ministry for setting up six coal-fired power plants to generate a total of 2,625mw of electricity.

"Five of the plants having the generation capacity of 500mw each are expected to be built under Private Public Partnership (PPP), while the remaining 125mw capacity by the government itself," PDB Member (generation) Tapan Kumar Chowdhury told the FE.

All the five power plants under the PPP would be set up near the coast - one each near the country's two seaports Chittagong and Mongla, two at Meghnaghat, on the Meghna river bank and the rest at Mawa, on the Padma river bank.

The country might import coal from Indonesia, India or Australia to run these plants, as the output from the Bangladesh's lone operative Baropukuria coalmine won't be sufficient.

The government-owned 125MW coal-fired power plant would be set up onshore at Katakhali near the Barapukuria coalmine.

The government has stepped up activities to set up these coal-fired power plants as the gas crisis started taking toll on the overall power generation in the country with the state-owned energy corporation Petrobangla projecting emptying of the present gas reserve by 2019.

With the gas crisis getting worse every month, the government has already decided to keep provisions for dual-fuel for all the future power plants in the country.

The country's overall electricity generation is now hovering around 3,800mw against the peak hour demand for over 5,500mw.

But the government has a commitment to augment electricity generation to 5,000mw by 2011 and 7,000mw by 2013.

Currently over 80 per cent of the country's power plants are gas-fired but gas scarcity has forced a number of them, having the generation capacity of around 600mw -700mw, to shut.

Natural gas production is now hovering around 1,900 million cubic feet per day (mmcfd) against the demand for over 2,150 mmcfd.