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Download PDF The Power Cell yesterday received 13 bids from five companies for installing rental power plants, totalling 250MW power generation capacity, at seven locations for three years, competent sources said.
Although the Cell sought bids for the installation of rental power plants in eight locations with total generation of 300MW to ease the country’s power crisis before the next irrigation period, no bid was turned in for the eighth location.
The Cell would announce the names of qualified bidders by the third week of November after evaluating the bids for their financial and technical aspects. The rental plants can be installed within 120 days of awarding the contract, said official sources.
“The price offers that we received range between US 2 cents to 5 cents for each kilowatt-hour. Considering that the power from the rental plants are costlier than [that generated by] conventional independent power projects (IPPs), the price offers are excellent,” said a source adding, “Some price offers are as low as that of the IPPs.”
He, however, added that the low price offers were not the only factor that is considered for awarding the rental power contracts.
As per the government plan, gas-fired rental plants will be installed in Fenchuganj (50MW), Kumargaon (50MW), Shahjibazar (50MW), Ashuganj (50MW), Bogra (20MW) and Bhola (20 to 30MW). The petroleum-fired plants would be set up in Bheramara (20MW) and Khulna (40MW). The Power Cell short-listed 17 companies, local and foreign, who were asked to submit their bids yesterday.
However, in the tender that closed yesterday, there was no offer for Fenchuganj.
The companies that participated in the bid were Aggreko (Singapore), Alstom Power Rentals (USA), Kaltimex Energy (Indonesia), Energy Prima (Bangladesh) and a Bangladeshi consortium led by Green Power.
Energy Prima turned out to be the lone bidder for Shahjibazar and Kumargaon plants and it was the lowest bidder out of the three bidders for the Bogra plant, sources said.
The Bangladeshi consortium led by Green Power submitted the lowest offer in Ashuganj, although it did not mention in its offer whether the company had generators in ready stock.
Among the foreign companies, Alsthom was the lone bidder for Bheramara while Kaltimex quoted the lowest price among three bidders for Bhola. Aggreko quoted the lowest price between two bidders for Khulna.
Whether all these offers are valid will be known after the Power Cell completes the bid evaluation process.
“Rental power plants are emergency and temporary solutions. Our objective is to ease the power crisis in the next summer so that farmers can carry out irrigation. If we stick to just the low price offers without weighing whether the bidder is actually capable of installing the plant, we might fail in our objective,” said the source.
Referring to the two recently failed power projects (Meghnaghat-2 and Chandpur 150MW), he said the government would not take any decision that would lead to failure again.
Earlier in September, the chief adviser of the caretaker government approved the rental power plant project proposed by the power ministry. The Power Cell finalised the Requests for Proposal (RFP) for the rental power plants and listed 17 potential bidders.
The rental power schemes demand each bidder to have its own power generator. The government has been trying to sign rental power contracts for the last three years without any positive results.
The past elected government had tried to award dozens of rental power schemes to party men with 15-year tender term ignoring the fact that almost none of those bidders ever had any experience in power sector.
June 1st, 2008 at 4:48 am
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