Parts of Dhaka district faced a power outage for about two hours on Tuesday morning as the national grid collapsed with one of its critical substations in Aminbazar going up in flames.
The fire affected a critical point in the national grid, feeding power to Dhaka from base load plants situated in southern Bangladesh. This caused major power plants to halve their production to relieve stress on the grid.
Power generated at the 1,320MW Rampal power plant and the 1,320MW Payra power plant enters Dhaka through the Aminbazar sub-station.
鈥楾he national grid tripped at 7:08am when a transformer caught fire,鈥� BM Mizanul Hassan, chief engineer, system operation, Power Grid Company of Bangladesh, said, affecting many areas in Dhaka in a ripple effect.
Mizan is the chief of the probe body formed by the PGCB to investigate the incident. The investigation is expected to shed light on whether the fire triggered the tripping or whether the tripping caused the fire.
Immediately after the fire broke out at the transformer with 325MVA capacity authorities shut down three other transformers to prevent the fire from spreading.
The disruption resulted in the shortage of about 500MW of power supply, which is enough to cover more than a third of the regular power demand of the Dhaka Electricity Supply Company Limited, the PGCB said.
Installed in 2019, the transformer supplied electricity to many areas,聽 including Savar, Mirpur, Kalyanpur and Uttara.
Productions at the Payra power plant had to be reduced to 500MW, almost half of the supposed production at the time of the disruption.
To make up for the shortfall in the power supply, authorities started oil-fired peaking power plants in areas close to Dhaka, such as Cumilla.
Although power supply gradually resumed in many of the affected areas, some areas, including entire Savar remained without power supply for about two hours.
Fire Service and Civil Defence deputy assistant director Shahjahan Sikder said that the fire could not be completely put out until 5:00pm despite nine fire-fighting units working.
It took about two hours to bring the fire under control, the fire service said.
This is the first national grid collapse since October 2023, when an old transformer exploded at the Aminbazar sub-station, triggering a power outage in Dhaka.
In October 2022, the national power grid collapsed, causing power outages in four divisions for up to 10 hours. The 2022 grid collapse forced 32 power plants to shut down within minutes. The power shortage was measured to be 650MW at the time.
The PGCB, after investigating the 2022 fire, said that the cause of the national grid collapse was a sudden increase in power demand by the power distributors, who disagreed with the finding, however.
There were two other occasions of the grid collapse after 2014. The reasons triggering the grid collapses were never known beyond doubt.
Bangladesh has an installed generation capacity of 27,566MW. The power transmission and distribution capacity is capable of smoothly handling only half of the generation capacity.
On Tuesday, at the time of the grid collapse, the power supply dropped below 10,000MW. The supply exceeded 12,500 by 1:00pm, six hours after the disruption.
