Tripura power by December

India will be supplying 100 MW power to Bangladesh from Tripura's gas-fired Palatana power plant by the end of this year, said a top official of India's ONGC which runs the pant.

“As far as the Palatana unit is concerned, it is now producing 350 MW , Its next unit will also produce 350 MW and that will be ready by September. The power produced from that unit will be fed into the national grid and part of it will go to Bangladesh,” said V P Mahawar, Asset Manager Tripura of the Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC).

ONGC is the state owned oil and gas exploration company that now runs power plants as well.

Bangladesh government kept India’s request to allow transit of the heavy equipment for this Palatana project through the Chittagong-Asuganj route that helped the project to be commissioned.

Tripura chief minister Manik Sarkar said he had no objection to giving Bangladesh 'atleast 100 MW' of power from this project as a mark of gratitude during PM Sheikh Hasina's visit to Agartala in Dec 2011.

Later, the Indian government accepted Sarkar's suggestions.

The first unit of the 726.6 MW gas-based power plant at Palatana near here has started generating electricity and the second 363.3 MW unit is expected to commence operation by September.

Mahawar told bdnews24.com that ' if all went smoothly, we require just six to eight month to distribute through the transmission lines as we only need to put the towers and a converter machine."

"That should not take much time but this is something that is always under our control, so we cannot just predict."

He informed that India is making a power grid for transporting electricity through Bangladesh.

“At present from the national grid via Calcutta around 500 MW power goes to Bangladesh but it is going through West Bengal. From here since the frequency is different as they use 60 Hz and we use 50 HZ so we use converter," Mahawar said.

". But if we give Bangladesh power from here that we can do, the transmission loss will be much less ,” said the ONGC Asset Manager.

Tripura will soon become India's first power surplus state as it would get state share of 196 MW from the ONGC Tripura Power Corporation (OTPC) at Palatana in addition to the 104 MW from the North East Electric Power Corporation's gas based thermal power project which would be operational by January next.