PM Hasina to inaugurate Payra Power Plant on Monday

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina is set to inaugurate the coal-fired 1,320MW Payra Power Plant in Patuakhali, on Monday.

Located along the bank of the Payra River in Patuakhali district, it is the largest power plant in the country built for the first time with ultra-supercritical technology.

The government of Bangladesh and China enjoy joint ownership over the plant.

Tawfiq-e-Elahi Chowdhury, adviser to the prime minister on power, energy and mineral resources affairs, Nasrul Hamid, state minister of the ministry of power, energy and mineral resources, Chinese ambassador to Bangladesh Li Jiming, among others, will attend the event.

Prior to this power plant, Meghna Power Limited at Meghna ghat in Narayanganj has been the largest power plant in Bangladesh, and it is capable of generating 450MW electricity.  

In the past 13 years, the country’s capacity to generate power has increased to 22,000MW from 4,948MW.

“It is the maiden in the country and the tenth in the world to have used ultra-supercritical technology,” Nasrul Hamid, the state minister, told The Business Insider.  

He said: “Because of adequate power supply against the demand, industries are now being set up in every district. We will generate 12,000 megawatts of electricity from different types of fuels in this plant. We are also going to build a gas pipeline and a floating LNG terminal.”

Payra, is the first one to come into production out of a few of the large coal-based power plants contracted by the government.

The 1,320MW Rampal coal-fired thermal power plant, a joint venture between Bangladesh and India, was set to start production in February last year. But the construction of the plant is yet to be completed. 

Besides, the construction of a 1,200MW power plant of Coal Power Generation Company is underway at Matarbari in Maheshkhali of Cox’s Bazar district.

It is worth citing here that the first unit of the Payra Power Plant worth  660MW had started feeding the national grid in May 2020. And, the second unit was launched at the end of the same year.

Through the formal inauguration, all other formalities will be completed, officials said. 

“Payra is our pride. We have proved that Bangladesh is capable of constructing better projects using ultra super critical technology,” said Engineer M Khorshedul Alam, chief executive officer of North-West Power Generation Company Limited and managing director of Bangladesh-China Power Company (pvt) Limited.

Bangladesh in ultra-supercritical club

After launching the coal-based Payra power plant in 2020, Bangladesh entered the ultra-supercritical club of the world and now, the country is on the seventh position in Asia. In South Asia, only India has this type of power plant.