UNB, Dhaka :
Extreme summer heat has pushed up the consumption of electricity forcing the authorities to go for frequent load shedding in the capital and elsewhere in the country.
Official figures showed a rise in the power outages this month. Officials concerned attributed the disruptions to poor transmission and distribution system rather than the shortage in power generation.
Power Development Board recorded 113 MW of load shedding on April 17 across the country, it increased to 375 MW on April 19 and came down to 269 on April 20.
No load shedding was reported on Friday (April 18 Friday) as the demand of electricity was low at the weekend.
On April 20 while Chittagong experienced 72 MW load shedding, Khulna 80 MW, Rajshahi 75 MW, Comilla 54 MW, Mymensingh 40 MW, Barisal 13 MW, Rangpur 41 MW while the total load shedding was 375 MW.
PDB said Dhaka and Sylhet went without load shedding on April 20.
Reports from different areas revealed that the extent of load shedding has been higher than the PDB’s claim.
Consumers in many areas report suffering 3 to 5 hours of load shedding a day in the capital city while the situation outside Dhaka is worse.
Consumers outside the capital city report suffering up to 7 hours of load shedding a day. Mohammad Ibrahim, a resident of Dhaka’s Segun Bagicha said his area gets an average of three hours of load shedding a day.
Matiur Rahman, who lives in old Dhaka, said they experience 3 to 5 hours of outages on a number of occasions a day. Power Development Board (PDB) said it generates 6150 MW of power against a demand of 6175 MW.
But experts in power sector do not rely on the official statistics of power generation and load shedding.
They claim that in most cases, locally enforced load shedding is not included in the official record book.
Even, local power disruption is also not being recorded in the central database of power system under the existing arrangement.
Former director general of Power Cell of the Power Ministry BD Rahmatullah said there is big gap between supply and demand in power generation. He disagreed with the government’s claim of power generation of 6000-7000 MW.
He said the rental and quick rental power plants, whose official generation capacity is said to be 2200 MW, is now generating less than 1100 MW as many of these plants trouble for their obsolete machinery.
“The extent of load shedding is not less than 1500 MW, but the government is hiding this with manipulated statistics”, he claimed. Officials at the power distribution entities blame the rising load shedding on poor transmission and distribution system.
PDB’s chief engineer (system planning) Mizanur Rahman said there are bottlenecks in the lower end of power supply as distribution companies do not receive full sanctioned load of power for poor transmission and distribution system.
