Bangladesh has a capacity of over 225,000 megawatts for electricity production but currently, the demand is only 16,000 megawatts, leaving excess capacity. However, the Power development board (PDB) still needs to pay for this even though this excess capacity is not utilized. Furthermore, power plants have to be closed at different times for energy crises or maintenance, but the capacity charge for these plants still needs to be paid resulting in a monthly loss of over seven million dollars.
Gas and fuel oil-based power plants have to pay a monthly capacity charge of $10-12 thousand per megawatt, while coal-based power plants pay $20-25 thousand. The annual capacity charge for every thousand megawatts of gas/oil-based power plants will be $12-14.4 crore and for every thousand megawatts of additional capacity of coal-based power plants, the annual capacity charge will be $24-30 million. Currently, 5,572 megawatts are sitting without PDB between rental and Independent Power Producer (IPP) centers, resulting in a total capacity charge of $71.9 million. Several oil-based power plants are not producing electricity according to demand and the capacity charges of these private centers still need to be paid in full, costing PDB nearly $4 billion. PDB is still unable to pay the bills of private centers regularly due to the dollar crisis and subsidies not being received regularly.