Blackout in Bangladesh
FACTORIES SHUT DOWN AS THREE FOURTH OF COUNTRY PLUNGES INTO DARKNESS OWING TO ‘GRID COLLAPSE’
LARGE swathes of Bangladesh were left without electricity on Tuesday (4) after a grid failure, a government official said, adding that the authorities were working to gradually restore power supply in the country of 168 million people.
The country’s power grid malfunctioned at around 2 pm (0800 GMT) on Tuesday, leading to blackouts across 75-80 per cent of the country, Bangladesh Power Development Board official Shameem Hasan said. An investigation was underway to ascertain the reason for the grid’s collapse and power had been restored in 45 per cent of the regions hit by the blackouts, he said.
Bangladesh, which gets three quarters of its electricity from imported natural gas, has been facing frequent power cuts this year due to its inability to address higher power demand.
The country has rationed some gas supplies amid high global prices driven up by Russia’s war in Ukraine. The government vowed frugal spending after reporting a record fiscal deficit last year.
Over a third of the country’s 77 gas-powered units were short of fuel, government data showed on Tuesday. Operations at Bangladesh’s lucrative export-oriented garment industry, which supply to clients such as Walmart, Gap Inc, H&M, VF Corp, Zara and American Eagle Outfitters were hit by the power outage on Tuesday.
“To cope with the (power) crisis, we have been using generators. Today’s outage was unpredictable. We had to shut our offices,” because generators cannot run for long periods, Shahidullah Azim, vice president of the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association, said.
The association represents members that have more than 4,500 garment factories nationwide. Bangladesh is the world’s second-biggest garment exporter after China.
“We can’t run factories without power,” Azim added.
Bangladesh’s peak power demand was about 14,200 MW on Tuesday evening, three per cent higher than the 13,800 MW forecast by the Bangladesh Power Development
Board, according to government data.
Power demand growth in Bangladesh in recent years has largely been driven by the residential segment, compared with industries.
A depreciating currency and dwindling foreign exchange reserves left Bangladesh unable to import sufficient fossil fuels, forcing it to close diesel plants and leave some gas-fired power stations idle.
The government imposed lengthy power cuts to conserve existing stocks in July, with outages lasting up to 13 hours a day at their peak.
Tens of thousands of mosques around the country have been asked to curtail the use of air conditioners to ease pressure on the electricity grid.
The blackouts sparked widespread public anger and helped mobilise large demonstrations on the streets of Dhaka. Bangladesh last witnessed a major unscheduled blackout in November 2014, when around 70 per cent of the country went without power for nearly 10 hours.