Veramara Power Plant

Veramara Power Plant

The Veramara Power plant is located in Veramara Thana under Kushtia district. It is 35 km far away from the main town of Kushtia. It has a great contribution to the electrical development of Bangladesh. For the last few years the country is facing serious load shedding due to shortage of generation capacity. The peak demand is expected as approximately 4,700MW as of 2006 while actual supplied capacity (maximum) has been 3,782MW dated on 30 October 2005, in which it is recognized that approximately 20% load shedding against the peak demand has been consistently existed in the power system. The demand in the country is increasing at the rate of about 8% per annum. As per PSMP1, the anticipated demand in 2012, 2017 and 2025 will be 7,732 MW, 11,291 MW and 19,312 MW respectively. It can be understood that more than 5,000MW of capacity should be urgently built within next coming 5 years, and around 20,000 MW of new power plants should be necessitated by 2025 in order to meet the future demand, taking account of 25% of reserve margin for achieving appropriate reliability in the system operation. The project site, Veramara Power Station, currently runs 3x20MW single combustion gas-turbines (SCGTs), while these units are planned to be retired by 2009. Including the land for the existing plants, BPDB possesses 70 acres of land in Veramara Power station. BPDP, the main counter part of the project that could be easily acquired needed land that is owned by the Water Development Board, who is adjacent to exciting power plant for the new plants if needed. Further, current water, railway and road communication systems are workable to carry heavy machineries and to manage the new power plants. Moreover, Veramara is connected with national grid through Kushtia, Faridpur and Ishurdi 132 KV transmission system. Moreover, 230 KV backbone transmission line from Barapukuria – Bogra – Sirajgonj – Baghabari – Ishurdi – Bheramara – Khulna South is under implementation by PGCB, financed by ADB, which is scheduled to be completed by 2010. This backbone transmission line in the west part of the country will connect all the power generating stations and load centers. However, there are some uncertain issues concerning the project. Ganges River, one of the biggest rivers in the world, has seemingly plenty of water in order to operate the new power plants. Nonetheless, data say that there is a big gap between rainy and dry season in terms of quantity of water so that JICA should investigate the feasibility whether runoff from the plants might impact to the river environment because combined cycle gas turbine utilize huge amount of water, approximately 15-20m3 per second, to cool down the machine. However this power plant is really a blessing for the people of Bangladesh.