Load shedding continues unabated as the country’s power generation still remained far behind the demand amidst sweltering summer heat although the government claimed that nearly 1900 megawatt of new power was added to the national grid.
People are reeling under frequent power outages even at mid-night while the industrial production suffered due to on-again
off-again load shedding.
Apart from the 1900 MW new power, the Power Development Board has been relieved of supplying nearly 1200-1400 MW of power for irrigation as the Boro season is now over. But that did not improve much the power supply situation.
An official of national load dispatch centre of PDB, the state electricity authority, told New Age that the difference between power generation and demand increases up to 900 MW when the temperature reaches to its peak in summer.
He said the country’s maximum power demand is 5,500 MW while the net generation is 4500 to 4600 MW these days.
However, a PDB official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that electricity demand had reached to 7,000 MW while the board could not supply more than 4,000 to 4,200 MW on a regular basis.
In working days, power distribution agencies in the capital and other major cities have to impose six to eight hours of load shedding while people of the most of the villages and sub-urban areas have to experience 10 to 15 hours of load shedding each day.
Power supply situation became particularly worse in the northern districts of the country.
In some rural areas, power outage intensified as power transmission and distribution lines were torn off by seasonal storms.
Reports from New Age correspondents suggested that people in the rural areas were complaining that once any distribution line is snapped it takes more than a week to repair it.
People were reportedly staging demonstration and laying siege on the local offices of the power distribution agencies demanding uninterrupted power supply.
Local people in Sylhet and Rajshahi on Wednesday staged protests against the
frequent and prolonged load shedding amid summer heat.
The government last year had taken a number expensive quick rental power projects with a commitment to increase power generation by about 1500 MW within three to nine months.
According to the power board statistics, it has already started buying nearly 1000 MW power from quick rental plants while another 500 MW from six power plants in the private sector are yet to come into generation.
BD Rahmatullah, former power cell director general, said that most of the power plants set up under quick rental projects were old and obsolete which cannot generate power at the declared capacity.
In addition, these power plants are combined with a number of small generators which are incapable for continuous power generation and often create synchronization problems. For these reasons the power board is not getting maximum from these plants, he pointed out.
He also said that the government has been much focused on implementing short-term power generation projects in the private sector instead of increasing power generation from large power plants in the public sector.
The power board is getting only 1,800 MW of power from public sector plants which originally had the capacity of generating about 4,000 MW.
-With New Age input
