Amid the summer's sweltering heat, the week's first working day started with 966 MW of load shedding.

A very severe heat wave has gripped parts of Bangladesh, with maximum temperatures ranging from 40°C to over 42°C in some areas.

National Load Dispatch Centre (NLDC) at the Power Grid Company of Bangladesh (PGCB) data shows a total of 966 MW of load shedding was recorded at 1:00pm today.

Officials said rural areas have been experiencing power outages mostly as the government has been pursuing a policy to avert the power cut in urban areas, mainly the capital Dhaka and large cities.

Both the Bangladesh Power Development Board (BPDB) and PGCB forecast show that the country's highest electricity demand will be 15,000 MW in the day peak hours while it will go up to 16,200 MW in the evening peak hours.

State Minister for Power, Energy and Mineral Resources Nasrul Hamid recently said that the electricity demand may cross 17,000 MW this summer.

The highest evening peak hours' power generation was 15,358 MW on Saturday, as this was a weekly holiday, while the day's peak period generation was 13,325 MW.

The NLDC data also shows that the extent of load shedding decreased to 387 MW at 12:00pm and again took a U-turn with increasing the power shortage.

The load shedding was recorded at 418 MW while the filing of this report at 3:00pm.

Interestingly, regarding the load shedding, a big difference was found in the official data of the BPDB and the PGCB.

The BPDB data shows that the country experienced the highest 374 MW of load shedding on Saturday while the evening peak demand was recorded at 15,053 MW.

Of the total load shedding, Dhaka region experienced only 40 MW load shedding, Cumilla 84 MW, Mymensingh 200 MW and Rangpur only 50 MW while Sylhet, Barisal, Chattagram, Khulna and Rajshahi experienced no load shedding.

But, the PGCB record shows that the entire country experienced 644 MW which is about double of the figure shown by the BPDB.

No official from BPDB was willing to comment on the matter when attention was drawn to it.

Meanwhile, state-owned Petrobangla official data shows that gas production increased to 3006.7 million cubic feet per day (MMCFD) which is the highest in recent days.

Recently, the gas production witnessed a big fall in gas production and the highest supply was recorded at 2,300 MMCFD last week.

Petrobangla officials said both the LNG terminals are now operating in full swing with a supply of over 1000 MMCFD while the Chevron-operated Bibiyana gas field is also back to production which also supplied over 1000 MMCFD against its capacity of 1200 MMCFD.

As a result, gas supply witnessed a good improvement across the country, said a Petrobangla official.