India's Adani Power begins commercial electricity supply to Bangladesh

Bangladesh on Thursday started receiving electricity from India's Adani Group on a commercial basis under a 25-year power purchase agreement, as the Bangladesh Power Development Board issued the commercial operation date (COD) to unit-1 of the Adani Godda 1,600MW thermal plant.

Adani Power (Jharkhand) Limited, the owner of the plant, received the COD after a successful 14-day reliability test that ended on Thursday.

The PDB issued the COD to the Adani Godda plant based on the reliability test report by the technical committee that returned home on Monday after observing Godda plant facilities.

The reliability test is the continuous uninterrupted operation of the entire facility for 72 hours at maximum load which the Adani Godda plant conducted in presence of a technical committee of the PDB.

The first unit of the Godda plant has the capacity to generate around 750MW of electricity, but the plant is currently ready to supply around 660MW, according to sources.

Meanwhile, Adani Power (Jharkhand) Limited, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Adani Power Limited, informed the National Stock Exchange of India Limited about the COD for unit-1 of the Godda plant in a letter signed by its Company Secretary Deepak S Pandya. The second unit with a capacity of 800MW is also in the final stages of completion and is expected to be commissioned soon, it said.

Earlier on 9 March, the first unit of Adani's Godda 1,600MW Thermal Power Plant was synchronised with the transmission line of the Power Grid Company of Bangladesh.

The Adani Group faced controversy when it requested a power supply order from Bangladesh, which BPDB officials found to be unusually high compared to the cost of coal with the same heating value used in the Payra 1,320MW Thermal Power Plant built in Patuakhali of Barishal.

In a statement issued on 2 April this year, Adani Bangladesh officials, however, refuted the claims, stating that the cost of their power plant electricity would not be higher than that of other coal plants in Bangladesh, including Payra, Rampal, and Matarbari thermal power plants.

The PDB is contractually obligated to purchase at least 34% of the power generated by Adani's plant throughout the 25-year contracted period. If the PDB purchases less than this amount, they will be required to pay Adani the entire cost of the coal used to produce 34% of the electricity generated by the plant. This includes the price of the coal, as well as any costs associated with transportation and port charges.

In contrast, there are no similar conditions in place for the five coal-based ultra-supercritical technology power plants in Bangladesh. The PDB only pays for the amount of coal used to generate the electricity that they actually purchase from these plants. This is the case for both the Payra and Rampal plants.

Adani Power will charge a capacity payment of 5.0969 cents (Tk5.4027) per unit of electricity generated. Annually, Adani will charge Tk6,228 crore solely for the rental of the plant.