Trial run of Matarbari power plant to commence in Dec

Staff Reporter :
Matarbari power plant will go for the experimental electricity generation in December this year and commercial commissioning will be in January next year.
The overall progress of the power plant is 75 per cent while the financial progress is 57 per cent till the end of January. As the same time, the physical progress of the port and power plant is about 88 per cent according to project data.
It is expected, the first unit of 600MW, using Ultra Super Critical Technology, to be run the experimental electricity generation in December next year, and the second unit (600MW) to come into commercial production 6 months later, according to the State Minister for Power, Energy and Mineral Resources, Nasrul Hamid.
Construction of a 275m high chimney had been completed.Two huge silos to store 60 days of coal for power generation are almost ready. Installation of two coal fired boilers, turbine generation and ancillary works are in full swing.
The Matarbari power plant constructed a jetty for unloading coal and silos to store coal for 60 days. The plant will need 13,104 tonnes of coal per day for generating electricity and those will be imported from Indonesia, Australia and South Africa through the Matarbari Port, according to the project details.
A 14.3km long, 300m wide channel was prepared to ease movement of mother vessels at the power jetty and the authorities constructed two separate ash ponds for a potential of 8 million tones of sediment deposition management.
Unlike, Payra and Rampal power plants, the Matarbari plant are working to solve constraints of transmission Lines from the very beginning as the first line is ready and the work of second line is in progress.
The plant is expected to account for about 10% of the total generation capacity of Bangladesh.
Earlier, the Matarbari power plant was proposed in September 2011 at the Matarbari, Maheshkhali, Cox’s Bazar and granted environmental approval in October 2013. A loan agreement was signed between the government and Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) on 16 June 2014 regarding this project.
The Ground-breaking ceremony for the project took place in January 2018, while trail run are expected to begin by December, 2023 and the full commercial operation will be start in 2024.
A consortium of Japan’s Sumitomo Corporation, Toshiba Corporation and IHI Corporation  
has been working as the EPC contractor for the Matarbari 1200 MW ultra-supercritical coal-based power plant project.
Initially, the project cost was estimated at around Tk 36 thousand crores, but now the cost of the project has increased to Tk 51 thousand 854 crores.