Indonesias state-owned oil and gas company PT Pertamina Power has stepped forward to construct a 500 MW solar power project on the remaining land of Maheshkhalis Matarbari 1200 MW coal-fired power plant.
A memorandum of understanding, or MoU, was signed between Bangladesh Coal Power Generation Company Limited and PT Pertamina Power at the InterContinental, Dhaka hotel, on Monday.
Abul Kalam Azad, managing director of Coal Power Generation Company, and Fadli Rahman, strategic director of Pertamina Power Indonesia, signed the agreement.
Once built through a new joint venture company, this will be the largest solar plant in Bangladesh.
Bangladesh will provide the land, and Pertamina will finance around $500 million.
State Minister for Power, Energy and Mineral Resources Nasrul Hamid said: "This is the single largest investment in Bangladesh [power sector]. Earlier, North-west Power Generation Company also started a 500 MW project."
"The Power Division has taken an ambitious plan. We are preparing to produce another 12,000 MW of electricity by 2030," he added.
According to the Power Division, ongoing projects aim to generate a total of 13,067 MW of electricity from 126 projects.
These include 47 projects generating 3,749 MW through renewable energy sources and 79 projects under implementation with a capacity of 9,318 MW.
The state minister said that the expansion of renewable energy is being encouraged. Efforts are also under way to import renewable energy from neighbouring countries.
The gas crisis, ongoing for nearly two months because of damage to the floating LNG terminal during Cyclone Remal, may last another week, said the state minister.
After the event, he said, "We were hopeful that the gas issue would be resolved by the 16th of July."
"The FSRU was damaged in the storm. After repairing the FSRU, another problem emerged two days ago. Now, people from Singapore are coming to fix the FSRU. This is a Summit FSRU."
—bdnews24.com
