Govt invites tender for 530MW rental power plants

Finally, the government kick-started the process of installing eight rental power plants having an aggregate generation capacity of 530 megawatts as the state-owned Power Development Board (PDB) on Thursday invited tender for the schemes conceived in a crash course to mitigate a nagging electricity crunch.
Of the 8 plants, 4 will be high-speed diesel (HSD)-based while the remaining 4 furnace oil-based. The 4 HSD plants are to be located at Bhramara (100 MW), Katakhali (50 MW), Thakurgaon (50 MW) and Syedpur (50 MW), while the furnace oil-based plants to be built in Noapara (100 MW), Madanganj (100 MW), Jamalpur (30 MW) and Barisal (50 MW).The PDB will purchase electricity from the furnace oil-fuelled plants for 5 years and from the diesel-fired plants for three years.
“Successful bidders will arrange funds for installation, operation and maintenance of the power plants,” says one of the terms and conditions set in the tender.
The last dated for selling tender documents has been fixed October 21 while the tender-closing date October 22 up to 11 am. The tender documents will be opened on October 22 at 11:30 am at the PDB office.Interested bidders have to pay US$ 500 or Tk 35,000 through bank draft to PDB for each set of tender for each plant during its submission. Tender documents are also available on the PDB website: bpdb.gov.bd.
During the dropping of the tender documents, the bidders will have to deposit earnest money at the rate of US$ 5,000 per MW or Tk 350,000 per megawatt in the form of unconditional bank guarantee.The bank guarantees have to be issued by a local bank in Bangladesh or by a foreign bank which shall be endorsed by a local scheduled bank in Bangladesh. As per a recent decision of the power ministry, after completion of the tender evaluation, the government will announce the names of the responsive bidders. “The final power-purchase deal and other necessary agreements will be signed between the plant sponsor and the government by November 30,” said one official citing the tender papers.After the signing of the contracts, the sponsors will have to set up their plants and go into commissioning within 120 days. This means the deadlines for the power-plant sponsor will be March 31, 2010–by this time, they have to commission their plants.
In case of failure to meet the deadline, as per strict terms of the envisaged contracts, a defaulter-sponsor will have to pay a huge sum of compensation-even the penalty running into US$ 500 per megawatt per day. On the other hand, those who would be able to come into operation ahead of the schedule would get incentives.

Courtesy of UNB, Dhaka