Kushiara power plant adds 110MW

Kushiara Power Company Ltd, a power plant located in Sylhet's Fenchuganj, has started to supply 110 megawatts of electricity to the national grid.

Max Infrastructure Ltd, a local company, is implementing the project and is also carrying out the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) work of the gas-based plant. The single unit of the gas-based plant added the power to the national grid in the first week of August.

The construction began in February last year and after 17 months the single-cycle plant went into operation.

The combined-cycle plant is about to add another 53MW power to the grid by November this year. In total, the plant will supply 163MW of power for 22 years as per Max Infrastructure's agreement with Bangladesh Power Development Board.

The EPC cost of the plant is Tk 1,080 crore. Eighty engineers, most of them Bangladeshi, and 950 workers are working at the plant.

The plant receives 2.8 crore cubic metres of gas every day from Jalalabad Gas Transmission and Distri-bution System Ltd. Ghulam Mohammed Alomgir, chairman of Max Infrastructure Ltd, said,

“The EPC of the plant is in progress. This is a milestone because it is being done by a Bangladeshi company whereas other plants are being constructed by foreign companies.”

He said the engineers completed constructing the single-cycle power plant in 17 months ensuring fool-proof safety. “Without any accident, four million man-hours have been achieved in the plant,” he said.

Alomgir said bringing foreign contractors is costly, so Bangladesh must develop local contractors to complete this type of projects.

Ratan Kumar Biswas, chief engineer of PDB Sylhet, said most companies award contracts to foreign companies to build a power plant. But Max Infrastructure Ltd has hired such expertise on its own and directly implemented the project.

Max Infrastructure Ltd is one of the biggest infrastructure development companies in the country under MAX Group.