Payra power plant expected to resume operation from Sunday. The country’s largest thermal power plant completely shut down on June 5 due to coal shortage.
“We hope we can resume operation of the plant early on Sunday,” Engr AM Khurshedul Alam, managing director of Bangladesh-China Power Company (Pvt) Limited (BCPCL), told UNB.
The 1,320MW Payra coal-fired power station is owned and operated by the BCPCL, a joint venture of Bangladesh’s state-owned North-West Power Generation Company Limited and China’s state-owned China National Machinery Import and Export Corporation (CMC).
On Friday, a ship carrying 41,327 tons of coal arrived at Payra Port, 18 days after the thermal power plant shut down due to a coal shortage.
According to plant authorities, four more coal-carrying ships will arrive in Payra in the first week of July.
Payra, the country’s largest thermal power plant, was entirely shut down on June 5 due to a lack of coal.
Due to a failure to pay $390 million in outstanding payments due to a dollar shortage, production of a unit of the power plant was halted on May 25 as the companies involved ceased delivering coal.
Another unit’s production continued until June 5, when it, too, shut down due to a lack of coal, resulting in weeks of nationwide load-shedding during the hottest summer on record.
