PDB tender goes online

8 Rental Plants
PDB tender goes online
The Power Development Board debuts in floating its tender notice online today for eight rental power projects totalling 530MW capacity on its website www.bpdb.gov.bd.
Power Secretary Mohammad Abul Kalam Azad inaugurated the launching of the online tender yesterday evening at the PDB office. PDB Chairman ASM Alamgir Kabir and other high officials were present at the ceremony.
“This has been done in line with the government’s commitment to a Digital Bangladesh,” said a PDB official.
The PDB aims to award the five-year contracts by November 19.
The rental plants are a 100MW diesel-fired plant in Bheramara and three 50MW diesel plants in Rajshahi, Thakurgaon and Syedpur, two 100MW plants based on heavy fuel oil (HFO) in Madanganj, Jessore, a 50MW HFO plant in Barisal and a 30MW HFO plant in Jamalpur.
The HFO plants will have to be implemented within 270 days of signing agreements with the PDB while the diesel plants within 120 days.
These projects have been taken up to ease the load shedding situation from next year for a term when the PDB implements four major coal-fired power projects totalling 2,000MW capacity by 2014.
The rental plants are short-term solution to the existing power crisis as these can be dismantled in short notice. The price can be two to three times that of conventional power plants.
A bidder must have experience of developing a 30MW rental or independent power project to qualify for bidding for a 100MW plant.
If the contractor fails to meet the project implementation deadline, it would have to pay a fine of $500 per megawatt of electricity per day.
The bidders will deposit bid bonds at a rate of $5,000 per megawatt of electricity.
Between September 2006 and April 2008, previous two governments awarded contracts for four rental power plants totalling 167MW capacity to inexperienced local companies for a 15-year term. Of them, one could not launch its 51MW plant.
Last year, the caretaker government awarded eight more three-year rental power contracts–all but one to local inexperienced companies. Only four of these companies could start operation while four totalling 180MW capacity failed to launch their projects as per schedule.

Courtesy of The Daily Star