Rural areas bear the brunt of power outage

Hundreds of thousands of people in the rural areas have been subjected to hours of power outage despite record-setting generation of electricity over the last few days.

According to Bangladesh Rural Electrification Board (REB), its subscribers in Mymensingh, Jamalpur, Kishoreganj, Netrakona, Cox's Bazar, Narsingdi, and Rangpur are suffering the longest outages as the country is seeing temperatures of over 42 degrees Celsius.

A majority of REB's 3.58 crore subscribers are seeing  power cuts every day.

On April 22, Bangladesh Power Development Board (PDB) produced 16,233 megawatts around 9:00pm, breaking the previous record of 15,648MW on April 19, 2023. But people in Mymensingh's Muktagacha barely had electricity that night.

Hosne Ara Begum, a resident of Mankun area, said, "There was a two-hour outage from 7:30pm. Only 15 minutes after it was restored, there was another one-and-a-half-hour outage. Throughout that night, we only had electricity in 10-15 minute at a go. The daytime situation was not different."

Besides enduring the oppressive heat, Hosne Ara is also struggling to keep her fish farming business running.

"It usually takes a day to completely drain a pond. Due to the power cuts, the job takes three days, and we have to spend more on rental pumps," she told The Daily Star.

PDB officials say during the week-long Eid holidays, power consumption was low because offices and factories were closed. As everything reopened and the sun began to beat down on the country from April 21, power consumption spiralled, leading to outages.

In the last four days, PDB generated over 15,500MW during evening peak hours. In the previous week, peak generation hovered around 13,000MW.

On April 22, despite the record generation of power, there was a shortage of 1,000MW at night, leading to the outages suffered mostly by the REB subscribers.

People in the rural areas bore the brunt as around 731MW of load was managed by cutting power to REB, according to data.

REB subscribers constitute more than 55 percent of the country's electricity users.

On that day, Mymensingh and its five adjacent districts received 1,100MW against a requirement of 1,500MW, according to the PDB data.

Yesterday, there was a shortage of around 1,500MW. REB got 1,000MW less than its demand, according to PDB data.

Khandaker Mokammel Hossain, a member of PDB, said the situation in the region is particularly bad as there are no major power plants in the area.

A gas-fired plant in Mymensingh's Shambhuganj has a capacity of 150MW, but it has been producing around 30-35MW in recent days due inadequate gas pressure, he said.

"The problem has been persisting for a long time. There are some other liquid fuel based power plants in the region, but those are not designed to run for an entire day," he added.

Residents of the regions that do not have regional power producers are facing major outages.

According to PDB data, a major power producer in Rangpur region is the 525MW Barapukuria power plant.

Only a 275MW unit is running mainly because of shortage of coal.

Abdul Halim, a farmer of Kaliganj upazila in Lalmonirhat, said he had not been able to irrigate his paddy fields for several days.

"The scorching heat is opening up cracks on my farmland. This is becoming an emergency situation for me," he added.

PDB's total power generation capacity and the near 3,000MW imported from India totals to around 26,000MW.

Currently, the power sector is getting around 1,300 million cubic feet of gas per day, which is the highest ever. The gas-fired power plants are producing up to 7,900MW while the coal-based plants are producing up to 3,500MW.

Furnace oil-based power plants generate around only 2,000MW as the fuel is comparatively expensive.

"We are short of liquid fuel. Besides, there are some technical problems with running these kinds of plants 24/7. But we are trying to keep the power supply stable," said Mokammel Hossain.