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Rental Power Contract

Three failed companies among 5 get renewal

Staff Correspondent
The cabinet's purchase committee yesterday approved five years contract extension for five rental power plants, three of which have around $97 million in unpaid penalties with the Power Development Board (PDB) for various failures.
At a meeting chaired by Finance Minister AMA Muhith, the committee also gave nod to 18 other purchases, including import of 1.25 lakh tonnes of fertiliser, relocation of two rental power sites, land filling of the Purbachal housing project, and construction of bridges.
The five rental plants that received contract extension are Desh Energy, Energis, Precision, Quantum Power and RJ Power.
Desh Energy and Energis are facing penalties of $15 million each for using excessive fuel and excessive shutdowns of their plants. Desh Energy runs a 100 megawatt plant and Energis a 55 MW plant, but both produce much less electricity than their declared capacity.
Quantum Power is faced with a $67 million penalty for massive failure with two of its rental power projects.
The company operates a 110 MW diesel
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power plant, which produces around 15 to 20 MW of power. The purchase committee has approved contract extension for this plant. Quantum has proposed converting the fuel type of this plant from diesel to cheaper heavy fuel oil (HFO).
Earlier, power ministry officials had termed the plant a dead project and said it could not be revived through a contractual extension.
The remaining two plants belonging to Precision (55 MW gas fired rental plant in Ashuganj) and RZ Power (50 MW diesel fired plant in Thakurgaon) have no unpaid penalty issues.
As per the purchase committee approval, the defaulter rental companies, which had obtained court injunctions to stop the PDB from collecting penalties, would withdraw their court cases. The firms could also pay up the penalties in instalments upon mutual settlements.
Besides, the power tariffs of all these rental plants would be marginally lower
during the extension period than their original rates.
To resolve the country’s power crisis urgently, successive governments from 2007 signed dozens of rental power contracts as a short term measure. Rental power plants take short time to install and decommission and they charge higher costs for power than the conventional power projects.