Baraka Patenga invests Tk 400cr in setting up solar power plant

Baraka Patenga Power Limited is investing nearly Tk 400 crore to set up a 50-megawatt solar power plant in Sylhet eying to grab the fair share of the renewable energy market.

“The solar power plant needs 150 acres of land and we’ve already started acquiring the land,” its Managing Director Monzur Kadir Shafi told The Business Post on Wednesday.

He estimated that the investment amount might range from Tk 350 crore to Tk 400 crore to install the plant.

The company will meet a portion of the project cost from its own sources and a portion will be met from the bank loans, according to him.

Apart from the solar plant, Baraka Patenga took up a project to generate power from wastes and submitted the project proposal to Sylhet and Chattogram city corporations separately.

Shafi, however, believes that power generation from waste might not be viable in the context of Bangladesh as wastes here do not contain enough calories to produce power.

Experts say the use of renewable energy will increase in the coming days to reduce carbon emissions as part of government policy and global awareness.

Keeping the experts’ view in mind, the company is now focusing on renewable energy to retain a fair share in the local power sector, according to Baraka Patenga’s annual report.

The government is eyeing to increase the contribution of renewable energy to the country’s overall electricity generation to around 40 per cent by 2050, which is now less than 3 per cent now, according to the Power System Master Plan of Bangladesh.

“As part of our future growth plan, we’re exploring suitable ventures to enter renewable energy generation projects,” Baraka Patenga Power Chairman Gulam Rabbani Chowdhury was quoted as saying in the annual report.

Noting the growing importance of environmentally friendly industrialisation, the chairman hoped that his company would be at the forefront of Bangladesh’s renewable energy sector in the future.

“We believe, due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the demand for the ecological friendly project will be very high in near future and we desire to become a major player in that field,” he mentioned.

The company thinks the use of modern technology in power generation would reduce environmental pollution.

Earlier, Baraka Patenga, in an unprecedented step in the country’s power sector, had installed a Flue Gas Desulfurisation System in its plant.

The system controls Sulphur emissions from furnace oil and protects nature from pollution.

Chowdhury said, “We’ve also installed steam turbine generator plant to recycle and reuse valuable resources thus ensuring reduction of burning fuel.”

Baraka Patenga went on commercial stream in 2014 with a single power project -- 50MW -- at South Patenga in Chattogram.

Within seven years, the company turned into a large conglomerate having a total of 3 power plants with a power generation capacity of 264-megawatt.

The three plants are Karnaphuli Power Limited (KPL), Baraka Shikalbaha Power Limited, and Barak Securities Limited.

In April this year, Baraka Patenga received IPO approval to raise Tk 225 crore. On Wednesday, its share declined 2.3 per cent on the Dhaka Stock Exchange.