Wärtsilä, a leading global supplier of decentralised power plant solutions, has recently received equipment orders for two new power plants to be supplied to customers in Bangladesh. The government of Bangladesh has established an urgent plan for dealing with the current power shortage, and these two new power plants will add significant generating capacity to the national grid. The value of the two contracts is approximately €68 million.

Summit Naryanganj Power, an independent power producer (IPP), has ordered Wärtsilä 46GD gas-diesel engines and auxiliary equipment for its Naryanganj power plant project. Although the site does not currently have access to gas supplies, the dual-fuel engines can be switched from heavy fuel oil (HFO) operation to gas at a later stage when gas eventually becomes available.

The Wärtsilä gas-diesel technology offers a unique degree of fuel flexibility, permitting the engines to run on a variety of fuels including crude oil, heavy fuel oil, light fuel oil, natural gas, associated gas, or any combination of liquid fuel and gas. In addition, the technology is insensitive to variations in the fuel composition. This feature enables even further flexibility in the utilization of different kinds of fuel for power generation.

“The ability of the Wärtsilä generating equipment to operate on either HFO or gas, and to be able to switch effortlessly from one to the other, was a key factor throughout the negotiations of the Narynaganj project,” commented Göran Richardsson, business development manager for Bangladesh, Wärtsilä Power Plants.

Another IPP, Khulna Power Unit II, has ordered Wärtsilä 46 engines and auxiliary equipment for its Khulna Extension project. In view of the urgency of the situation in Bangladesh, both orders are being handled on a fast-track basis, and the power plants are scheduled to be in operation as early as March 2011.

“We are pleased to work with Wärtsilä to help solve Bangladesh’s power crisis. In this regard I am pleased to recall that in 1997 when Bangladesh was suffering similar power shortages, in partnership with Wärtsilä, we supplied 234MW of barge-mounted power plants to solve the problem. Now, in 2010 we are again working together to provide fast-track optimized solutions to help Bangladesh,” said Muhammed Aziz Khan, chairman of Summit Narayanganj Power and Khulna Power Unit II.

“We have worked closely with all parties involved throughout the planning and tendering process, and we are extremely pleased that our power solutions have been selected. It is our intention to do everything possible to assist our customers and the government of Bangladesh in meeting the urgent power requirements,” added Göran Richardsson.

Wärtsilä currently has around 600MW of generating capacity installed in Bangladesh.