Parts of Dhaka witnessed hours of power cuts on Thursday following the partial collapse of the national power transmission grid in the morning.
Data released by Power Grid Bangladesh revealed a power shortage of 498MW at 4:00pm when the supply of power stood at 14,379MW against the power demand of 14,900MW, which is just half of Bangladesh’s current installed power generation capacity of 28,197MW.
The power grid collapse undermined the promise to provide an uninterrupted power supply during the Durga Puja celebration, which is just days apart. Power cuts during the Durga Puja, the largest religious festival of the minority Hindu community, could compromise security measures.
“The transformer is not yet back in full operation,” BM Mizanul Hassan, chief engineer, PGB, told UNB around 7:30pm.
The transformer in Ghorashal tripped around 5:00am, Mizan said, after a fire broke out. The reason for the fire could not be known.
“Ghorashal is a power hub. A very important one,” said Mizan.
Ghorashal connects parts of Dhaka, Tongi and Joydevpur to the national power supply grid.
The partial collapse of the national power transmission grid worsened Bangladesh’s already bad power supply situation. Rural areas have been witnessing hours of power cuts every day since the beginning of the month, which was rather drier and hotter compared with the previous three months.
The fuel crisis, mainly due to the dollar crisis, has been responsible for inadequate power generation.
Bangladesh can barely use half of its gas-based power generation capacity. Coal-based capacity also remains substantially unused because of non-payment of bills and coal shortage.
“We are not able to use furnace oil capacity as well for the need to cut costs,” said Jahurul Islam, member, generation, Bangladesh Power Development Board.
Furnace oil-based power generation capacity accounts for a fifth of the overall power generation capacity. At 4:00pm, the power generation from using furnace oil stood at 2,181MW against its total generation capacity of 5,641MW.
The gas capacity generation was 5,393MW at the same hour. The total gas generation capacity is 12,512MW.
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The total coal generation capacity is 5,683MW. At 4:00pm, the generation of electricity from coal stood at 4,092MW.
The power shortage further worsened following a drop in the power supply from Adani on Thursday. The 1,496MW Adani power plant maintained a supply of around 1,000MW during most of the daytime. The supply even dropped below 1,000MW at 10:00 am and 11:00am.
The BPDB could not clarify the reason behind Adani's reduction in its power generation.
The latest power grid failure reinforced the grid’s unreliability, which is a cause of concern for industries. Bangladesh’s industries mostly rely on captive power generation, which is worth 2,800MW in addition to the overall installed power generation capacity.
On April 26, nearly two dozen districts suffered a blackout after what the PGB described as a technical failure triggered by a kite string.
In the first half of March, another power grid failure hit Dhaka following a fire.
Earlier in October 2023, the Aminbazar substation saw one of its transformers blast, leading to an outage in Dhaka.
Exactly a year ago, the national power grid collapsed, causing power outages in four divisions for up to 10 hours.