Bangladesh is facing increasing load-shedding as technical issues have forced the shutdown of two 800 MW units at Adani Power’s 1,600 MW coal-fired plant in Jharkhand.
According to official sources, electricity generation from Unit-1 was halted on April 1, while Unit-2 ceased production in the early hours of Friday, at 1 am.
Data from Power Grid Bangladesh PLC, which tracks hourly power generation and transmission statistics, reveals that the country faced its highest load shedding of 428 MW at 3 pm on Saturday, a weekly holiday when electricity demand is typically lower than on working days.
“This has been the highest amount of load-shedding in recent days when usually power shortages remained between 50-150 MW,” said a Power Grid official.
Officials at the Power Grid Bangladesh PLC and the Bangladesh Power Development Board (BPDB) apprehend that the shutdown of one of the largest sources of power supply may lead to further increase in load shedding on working days.
“The extent of load-shedding may further increase on Sunday with the start of the working days of the week,” a top official at the BPDB told UNB.
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It is assumed that normally, the country’s rural areas in the northern districts are preferred for power cuts because a good number of power plants there are run using costly fuel like liquid petroleum, diesel and furnace oil.
“If diesel is used, each unit of electricity costs over Tk 40 and it is Tk 20 if furnace oil is used,” said a senior official of the BPDB.
However, Energy Adviser Dr Fouzul Kabier Khan recently assured that there will be no discrimination in the load shedding allocation. “We’ll prefer to resort to power cuts first in Dhaka city and then in other areas,” he told reporters in Chattogram.
Meanwhile, the BPDB has requested the Oil Gas and Mineral Resources Corporation Petrobangla to provide additional gas supply to power plants to increase electricity generation from local power plants.
Official data show that the country’s demand was forecast to be 12,600 MW during the daytime peak hours and 13,800 MW during the evening peak hours.
Bangladesh has been importing electricity from Adani’s Jharkhand Power Plant since April 2023 under a 25-year power purchase agreement (PPA).