1,320MW Payra plant awaits inauguration
A coal-fired Payra power plant of 1 1,320 megawatts (MW) in Dhankhali area under Kalapara upazila of Patuakhali district is awaiting inauguration.
Already connected to the national grid, the plant's professional supply is before long to be inaugurated by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, said AM Khorshedul Alam, chief executive officer of North West Power Generation Company, one particular initiator of the construction.
Some 163 kilometres (km) of transmission lines hook up the plant to a Gopalganj grid. Another 85km of lines are being create to have it up to Amin Bazar in Dhaka.
The power plant's first unit has been supplying 660MW of electricity to the countrywide grid since May 15 this past year after being constructed in four years.
The next unit started production on December 8, 2020.
The plant is currently creating 1,000MW on an experimental basis, burning through some 13,000 tonnes of coal a day, generating 180 tonnes of fly and bottom ash as byproducts.
Fly ash is a substance containing aluminous and siliceous materials that forms cement on the presence of water.
A organization buys fly ash from the plant, said Shahmoni Ziko, assistant manager of Bangladesh-China UTILITY COMPANY (Pvt), which built the plant. The amount of byproduct purchased is but to be known.
The plant includes a 76.30 acre dumping zone where 25 years' byproduct could be kept, added Ziko.
The plant is currently importing coal from Indonesia. It has got its own jetty whose conveyor belts can unload 3,200 metric tonnes of coal within an hour from four vessels concurrently.
An contract was signed between Bangladesh's North-West Vitality Generation Company and China National Machinery Import and Export Corporation to set up the power plant during Primary Minister Sheikh Hasina's visit to China on 2014.
Later, Bangladesh-China UTILITY COMPANY (Pvt) was formed.
The corporation built the plant on 982.77 acres of area at a price of around Tk 20,000 crore or $2.46 billion. Of the total amount, $1.96 billion has been loaned by The Export-Import Bank of China.
Rezwan Iqbal Khan, executive engineer of the energy plant, said on October 14, 2016, Primary Minister Sheikh Hasina and Chinese President Xi Jinping laid the building blocks stone of the power plant.
The Bangladesh-China UTILITY COMPANY (Pvt) completed the construction work of two units promptly, he said.
