Cities suffered an unprecedented spell of power outage on Tuesday, over five hours at a stretch, as barely 12,500MW of electricity on average was produced, using 45 per cent of the country’s installed power generation capacity. 

The power supply situation was even worse in rural areas given the country’s traditional way of distributing electricity prioritising its city consumers.

The power crisis presents an enormous challenge to the country’s one-month-old interim government which is unlikely to rejuvenate anytime soon the power sector weighed down by massive unpaid bills and substandard power plants.

Bangladesh, with hundred per cent overcapacity, has been battling a crippling power crisis for more than two years now, which only briefly eased when winter and spells of heavy rain lowered the power demand.

The latest spell of the crisis hit as some power plants either partially or completely shut their operations due to technical glitches or non-payment of bills amidst power demand rising following a rise in day temperature.

‘We are trying really hard to overcome the situation. But there are too many problems to deal with,’ said Bangladesh Power Development Board member Khandaker Mokammel Hossain, who is in charge of power generation.

The BPDB lost 1,500MW of electricity generation capacity because of a deficit in gas supply, Mokammel said, adding that the power sector received only 819mmcfd of gas against its demand of 1,300mmcfd on September 9.

The Indian Adani Power, which is the largest power supplier of the country with an installed capacity of 1,500MW, reduced its power supply by another 500MW apparently to mount pressure on Bangladesh to pay its outstanding power bill, he explained.

Indian media reported on Tuesday that Adani Group chairman Gautam Adani reached out to chief adviser Muhammad Yunus seeking the payment of $800 million unpaid bills.

The situation worsened when a technical problem in the coal mill supplying fuel to the BPDB-owned Barapukuria coal-fired power plant caused it to go out of operation on September 9,  cutting the supply of another 250MW of electricity to the national grid.

‘We hope to resume operation at the Barapukuria soon,’ said Mokammel, without being able to give a timeline.

Besides, the export of 160MW of electricity from India’s Tripura also halved, while the supply of power through Bheramara from India fell to below 900MW from 1,100MW due to non-payment of bills.

Large power plants such as the ones dependent on coal with 500MW or more capacity partially operated because of coal shortages or technical difficulties.

For instance, 1,150MW Matarbari power plant generated maximum 855MW on Monday. The power plant needs 13,000 tonnes of coal to operate at full capacity but fuel supply shortages restricts its operation to burning 8,000 tonnes a day.

‘With the supply of coal we have we can operate partially for a month and a half,’ said supervising engineer Manowar Hossain Majumder of Coal Power Generation Company, the owning company of the Matarbari plant.

The Matarbari plant was not paid any bills since it came into operation in July last year. The plant authority is also facing difficulties in coal import because of a High Court ban on the import over alleged corruption.

At 12:00 midnight past Monday, peak load shedding of 2,312MW was recorded when the BPDB generated 13,279MW of electricity against the demand of 15,700MW.

This was the only hour the electricity production reached 13,000MW on Tuesday, when the average load shedding was above 1,500MW.

At the peak load shedding hour, 60 per cent of gas capacity of over 12,000MW remained unused. A little over a third of furnace oil capacity of nearly 6,000MW was used at the same time while nearly 40 per cent coal capacity remained unused.

The gas supply substantially dropped after one of the country’s two floating storage and regasification units went down hit by the cyclone Remal in late May.

The impacted floating storage and regasification unit is expected to be reconnected this week though it does not promise to increase the gas supply.

Petrobangla on Tuesday supplied 590mmcfd of liquefied natural gas against its capacity of supplying 1,100mmcfd.

‘The gas supply is likely to remain the same throughout the rest of the month since no supply is coming from the spot market during the time,’ said Kamruzzaman Khan, director, Petrobangla.

Bangladesh is hard-pressed for the foreign reserve which energy experts said was to a great extent caused by predatory power sector expenses made under an indemnity law.

The situation has pushed Bangladesh to take a $4.7 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund.

Ziaur Rahman, a resident of Balanagar village in Bagmara of Rajshahi, told New Age on Tuesday that they experienced up to nineteen hours of power cuts each day over the past two days.

‘Electricity supply lasts 15–20 minutes before going out for up to two hours,’ he said.

Shohidul Islam, a resident of Malda Colony area in Rajshahi city, said that he experienced an unprecedented spell of power outage on Tuesday.

‘Power supply went out at about 8:30am and returned at 1:45pm,’ he said.

At the evening peak power generation hour at 9:00pm on Monday, according to the Power Grid Company of Bangladesh, Dhaka witnessed the country’s largest amount of load shedding of 520MW.

News Link: Power cut for 19hrs in villages, 5hrs in cities