Anisul Islam Noor :
People across the country on Tuesday suffered from five to six times load-shedding in a single day due to production loss of power generating units.
Even, people in the capital saw hour long load-shedding on the day worsening their woes with the advent of summer.
Officials said most power plants are running beyond their capacity due to supply disruption of fuel oil and technical glitz leading to load-shedding for several times in a day by the distribution companies.
The distribution companies are enforcing 1477MW load-shedding on an average per day in the wake of production shortfall.
Though the country’s installed power generation capacity is at 12,339MW, the maximum power generation remained below 7000MW due to above mentioned causes.
Industrial production is facing serious set back, and garment factories losing working hours due to short supply of electricity.
However, about 1160MW electricity generation remained disrupted due to short supply of gas in gas fired power plants. The situation may further worsen any time as seven more power plants with 610MW capacity may be shut down for shortage of diesel and furnace oil, Power Development Board (PDB) sources said.
On the other hand power consumption is increasing due to on going heat waves, according to weather report the weather will not change immediately.
According to PDB, consumption demand for electricity crossed 8500MW in the recent days but the generation could not reach to 7500MW due to lack of fuel and gas supply. Dhaka Power Distribution Company (DPDC) and Dhaka Electricity Supply Company (DESCO) are responsible to supply electricity in the capital. Both the entities are sustaining 300MW load-shedding in the day and during evening peak hours, PDB sources said.
Power supply situation outside the mega city Dhaka is a regular matter. It is more deteriorated in the areas covered by Rural Electrification Board (REB), said a retired operation engineer of PDB conditioning not to be named.
The load shedding in different areas of Rajshahi region is 265MW, Dhaka (out side DPDC and DESCO) 385MW, Mymensingh 59MW, Jessore and Khulna 131MW, Rangpur 123MW, Chittagong 83MW, Comilla 81MW, Barisal 30MW and Sylhet 20MW.
Besides, supply of another 370MW electricity remained disrupted due trouble of REB’s distribution lines. The demand of electricity in the REB’s areas in the evening hours is around 4000mw.
State Minister for Power, Energy and Mineral Resources Nasrul Hamid said, “It is not possible to increase gas supply immediately but we are working to ensure fuel supply in the power plants”.
PDB Chairman Md Shamsul Hasan Mia said, daily power consumption has crossed 8400 MW due recent heat waves, but the existing distribution lines can not take this load.
Besides, some power plants are facing technical problem and power generation machine are not working properly at others causing load-shedding, he said.
