With major power plants using only half of their capacities, power cuts have surged as electricity demand has soared amidst a heatwave.
At 1:00am on Saturday, the Power Grid Company of Bangladesh reported 292MW of load shedding against the demand of 15,410MW.
鈥楾here are no problems. We were just producing less electricity. The production, however, will increase from today,鈥� said Monzorul Islam, superintending engineer, load dispatch centre at the PGCB.
The PGCB鈥檚 daily generation report released on Saturday showed that the 1,496MW Adani power plant was operated at its half capacity alongside the 1,320MW Rampal power plant and 1,244MW Payra power plant that were also partially utilised.
The 1,320MW Patuakhali power plant and 1,150MW Matarbari power plant were completely out of use as they were under maintenance. The 307MW Barishal power plant and 1224MW Banshkhali power plant were also partially used.
All these seven plants are coal-fired.
Monzorul Islam said that all these plants were poised to increase power generation by today.
Between 7:00pm Friday and 8:00am Saturday, the PGCB reported 16 hours of power outage.
The country experienced six hours of power cuts on June 8, a day after the ongoing heatwave set in with the initial outage remaining below 100MW.
On June 7, at a time on the day power demand fell below 10,000MW.
During the Eid holiday, when offices, factories and production units were closed, Bangladesh set aside more gas for power generation, with 8,454MW produced from gas at 12 noon on June 8.
With offices and factories resuming operations, which is set to start in full swing from today, the supply of gas for electricity generation already dropped on Saturday, reducing the gas-based power generation by over 2,000MW.
On Friday, coal-fired plants produced about 4,000MW, liquid fuel-based plants produced up to 3,000MW, while from import and Adani power plant came over 1,500MW.
The power demand is likely to substantially increase from today with thousands of people returning to their work and bustling city life.
The ongoing heatwave contracted a bit by a light rain in parts of Bangladesh, including Dhaka, where the highest maximum day temperature dropped to 33.4C on Saturday.
On Saturday, country鈥檚 highest maximum day temperature of 38.8C was recorded in Nilphamari. The heatwave was also sweeping over the districts of Dinajpur, Rajshahi, Pabna, Feni and Khulna and Rangpur divisions.聽
The Bangladesh Meteorological Department said that the heatwave is likely to continue until June 17 when a wet spell is expected to set in, bringing down the temperature all over the country.
The BMD issued a heavy rainfall warning effective for 72 hours from 10:00am on June 16. Its bulletin, issued at 6:00pm on Saturday, forecast heavy to very heavy rainfall, potentially exceeding 88mm that might occur all over Bangladesh during the period of warning. Very heavy rainfall might trigger landslide in Chattogram, Bandarban, Khagrachari, Rangamati and Cox鈥檚 Bazar.聽
The day temperature might drop by up to 3C due to the rain.
