Adani shuts both units of 1,496mw plant, restarts one

After suspending electricity supply from both the units of a dedicated plant for 18 hours, in a recurrent seesaw, India's Adani resumed operation of one unit on Saturday evening to a sigh relief from imminent outages in Bangladesh, said sources.

The Adani Power Jharkhand Ltd (APJL) plant had shut full-scale operations at the zero-hour Saturday citing a technical fault, stated the state-run Bangladesh Power Development Board (BPDB) about the shutdown of operation of the power plant located inside Indian territory.

"The unit-1 of the 1,496-megawatt power plant was synchronized with the power-distribution systems at around 6:15 pm on the day and electricity generation reached around 45.79mw during the writing of the report at 7 pm," an official familiar with the matter told The Financial Express.

He hoped that the 748-mw- capacity unit-1 of the APJL would go into full production soon.

The remaining 748-mw -capacity unit-2 of the plant is expected to resume operation within next couple of days to reduce electricity load-shedding amid the scorching summer, the sources said.

Meanwhile, after running both the units for around a month, one unit of the APJL plant went put on April 8 due to boiler- tube leak, they said.

The power-export company had initiated supplying electricity from both of its dedicated power-plant units in early March following a call from Bangladesh at the start of Ramadan.

The APJL supplied even more than its official capacity during Ramadan, which played a significant role in ensuring the just-concluded Ramadan load-shedding-free, according to official data from the BPDB.

The Indian conglomerate also wrote to the BPDB recently about its readiness to supply more than its existing capacity of 1,496 megawatts "continuously if Bangladesh wants".

The BPDB, however, was yet to respond to the APJL call.  

Adani had long been pressing BPDB to settle its payment backlogs, but a persistent dollar crunch was pushing the power board to struggle to pay many independent power producers, as well as oil-fired and coal-fired plants.

The Indian business conglomerate offered Bangladesh scope to settle overdue payments worth around US$800 million by June 2025 to avoid a late- payment surcharge stipulated in  their Power Purchase Agreement (PPA).

The firm has offered to waive the late-payment surcharge for the period between January and June 2025 if BPDB clears its monthly invoices on time and settles outstanding dues as of December 2024 by June 30, 2025.

As per the PPA with the BPDB, the Indian firm imposes a steep 2.0-percent monthly interest as a late-payment surcharge on the total outstanding bill, which compounds to an annual rate of around 27 per cent, market insiders said.

The power purchase from the APJL plant has turned out to be a 'much-debated' venture since the initiation of power supply from the facility a couple of years back under what is seen as an overrated deal made by the now-deposed Awami League government. As the APJL started supply, the BPDB had sought a revision of the PPA with the former to import electricity from its Jharkhand plant, but to no avail so far. The deal was inked in November 2017 for 25 years to transmit power through a 400kV (kilovolt) dedicated transmission line connected with the national power grid here.

There are contentious issues over coal pricing, capacity payment and other costs involving the APJL.

Adani had shut down one of its two power units in Jharkhand on November 1 last year, halving its cross-border electricity supply to Bangladesh, over payment backlog worth around US$850 million. It also warned of closing down the remaining unit from November 7 unless the BPDB took steps to clear the dues.

Adani, however, backtracked on its decision to stop power generation entirely after the BPDB made a payment worth US$170 million through opening a letter of credit (LC) from Bangladesh Krishi Bank.

Officials have said the power board has made payment worth around US$85 million per month to APJL over the past several months, which is above the monthly bill against electricity purchase, to clear the overdue payments.

Transparency International Bangladesh, an anti-graft watchdog, also called for reconsideration and, if necessary, cancellation of the PPA with the electricity exporter.

Azizjst@yahoo.com