Nurul Alam . Chittagong
A severe power crisis has hit the Chittagong region, reeling under more than 150MW of load shedding, sources in the Power Development Board said.
The Secondary School Certificate examinees scheduled to take for the exams beginning February 15 have become the worst suffers because of the power crisis.
A drastic fall in power generation at the local power plants and the Kaptai hydroelectric project, coupled with increased consumption of power just before the advent of summer have fuelled the frequent power outage in the region, covering the Chittagong Cox’s Bazar and three hill districts, the sources said.
The Chittagong region needs 400MW of power at daytime and 510MW after the evening, the sources said.
Power plants in Chittagong mostly remain closed because of gas shortage. Besides, four out of the five Kaptai units are out of order as water level in Kaptai Lake dropped to 83 mean sea level against the normal requirement of 109msl, they said, explaining the reasons behind the power crisis.
The local gas-run power plants include two units at the Raujan thermal plant with a capacity to generate more than 400MW of power, 60MW Shikalbaha unit and the 10MW Shikalbaha barge-mounted unit, they said.
‘We are forced to shed load of 150MW to 170MW regularly because of poor generation,’ said the power board chief engineer in Chittagong, Tulashi Das.
‘Out of two, only one Raujan unit could be run somehow to generate 90MW of power and other plants remain shut. Only one out of the five Kaptai units operates to generate 40MW. So we find it difficult to cope with the growing demand with such a poor supply of 130MW,’ he said.
‘But we are managing it somehow with additional supply from the national grid, which is also insufficient. As a result, we need to go for routine load shedding,’ Tulashi said. ‘The national grid now gives top priority to irrigation in the northern parts of the country. So it cannot provide power to our requirement and expectation.’
‘With the summer setting in, the demand for power will increase more. But it cannot be tackled if generation could be increased,’ he said.
‘Our main problem is the poor supply of gas. If we get adequate gas to run the plants, we can easily generate 400MW from the two units of the Raujan plant and 70MW from two Shikalbaha units. In that case, we could have reduced our dependence on the national,’ he said.
‘Against the demand for 100 million cubic feet of gas to run the power plants, only 20 million cubic feet are supplied regularly,’ the power board official said.
Courtesy: newagebd.com
