A leak in the pipeline supplying liquefied natural gas at Anwara in Chattogram more than doubled load shedding on Wednesday compared with the day before.
The leak was caused by river dredging going on in the Karnaphuli River, said Bangladesh Power Development Board member Khandaker Mokammel Hossain, expecting the leak to be repaired by today.
With 27,515MW of installed power generation capacity, Bangladesh鈥檚 maximum fell short of 1,973 MW to meet its demand of 14,200MW at 3:00pm on Wednesday, showed data released by the Power Grid Company of Bangladesh.
The highest load shedding was recorded at the hour.
Between Wednesday morning and afternoon, power generation hovered around 12,500MW every hour.
The power generation from over 11,000MW of gas-based power plants dropped to less than 4,000 on Wednesday.
Bangladesh鈥檚 gas plants faced acute energy crisis since the cyclonic storm Remal hit in late May, rendering one of the two floating storage and regasification units out of order.
The FSRUs have the capacity to supply 1,100mmcfd.
The malfunctioning FSRU needed to be sent to Singapore for repair. The affected FSRU needs another week to be restored.
The daily gas report released by the Petrobangla showed that the LNG supply dropped to 455mmcfd between July 9 and 10.
The power sector had the demand of 2,316.9mmcfd on, said the Petrobangla report, against which the power sector received 1,013mmcfd.
A staggering economic crisis severely limited Bangladesh鈥檚 energy purchase capacity. Bangladesh鈥檚 power generation is mostly based on imported energy.
Piling up outstanding energy bills prompted power plants to suspend their operations repeatedly in the past.
Dozens of power plants remain out of operation due to a reason or the other every day.
The power demand is likely to go up over the next few days because of a rather dry spell of weather.
The Bangladesh Meteorological Department warned that a mild heatwave with temperature between 36C and 38C might set in soon.
A mild heatwave could substantially make an increasing cooling demand for it increases physical discomfort, particularly given the high humidity levels, often exceeding 90 per cent.