Power cuts strain life, businesses amid severe heat wave
Scorching summer heat turns more unbearable in Dhaka and elsewhere in the country as power plants are running with less capacity due to fuel shortage, resulting in frequent load-shedding.
Power outages, coupled with acute gas shortages, are also hitting the industries and businesses hard.
Currently, the country's power generation facilities connected to the grid have the capacity to produce 24,143MW electricity against a demand of 15,500MW to 16,000MW per day, said sources at the Power Development Board. But the country's production hovers between 14,000MW to 14,500MW, which leaves the consumers in a shortfall of 1,500MW to 2,000MW per day.
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Due to shorter production, distribution companies are rationing the power supply by area-wise load shedding, officials said.
People across the country have been suffering immensely due to increased load shedding – as long as eight hours a day in some areas – in recent weeks.
Even on Friday, the weekend that usually sees much lower demand, residents in different areas in Dhaka had frequent outages, every time for at least an hour.
"Power supply was disrupted two or three times in the morning alone," said a resident in the city's Moghbazar area yesterday.
Similar disruption was reported in other districts too.
"Power supply drops when the temperature rises," said Mohsina Akter, a resident of Bogura city.
Tahmina Parvin Shamoli, a small entrepreneur in the same city, worried about her restaurant business as she cannot use the refrigerator due to power cuts.
But there is no immediate remedy to power shortage in sight as the electricity producers have been struggling to manage the fuel necessary to run the power plants at full capacity, PDB officials said.
"We are utilising all the options we have. Due to the primary fuel shortage, we are failing to fully use our plants' capacity," said a top official of the Bangladesh Power Development Board, wishing to remain unnamed.
Productivity falls to 50% over unprecedented crisis
Due to the load shedding and gas supply shortage, industrial productivity across different sectors has plunged by 50%, said industry insiders.
Gas-driven industries have not been getting the minimum supply they need, while many other industries are operating their factories at partial capacity due to power cuts, load fluctuation and low voltages.
Bangladesh Textile Mills Association's former director Md Ruhul Amin said his spinning mill in Narsingdi has been facing around 10 hours of load shedding each day.
Khorshed Alam, an investor with 52 years of experience in running businesses including spinning mills, said he never saw such a gas crisis before.
"One production line of my factory is already shut, while other units are operating at a 30% capacity," he said.
"We get gas supply for only two hours in a day," he added.
Bangladesh Textile Mills Association President Mohammad Ali Khokon said production at most factories in this sector currently runs at 50% capacity on an average, but many textile factories' production has plunged to as low as 30% of their capacity.
He said, "The electricity supply situation has become the worst ever. Even posh areas like Gulshan and Banani are facing severe load shedding."
"We are facing this crisis even after getting hit by repeated electricity price hikes. Currently, the electricity price is 160.46% higher than that in 2010," Mohammad Ali Khokon.
He further said due to the recent gas price hike, his factories' monthly gas bills have jumped to around Tk75 crore on an average, which was previously Tk35 crore.
Irfan Uddin, general secretary of Bangladesh Ceramic Manufacturers and Exporters Association, said ceramic factories depend heavily on gas for production, but they have been getting a minimum supply during the day time. At night, they get a bigger volume of gas supply for only a few hours, which is not enough to keep the factories operational even at 50% capacity.
Improved gas supply alone can't ease crisis
For the first time this year, gas supply in the national grid crossed 3,100 mmcf on 29 May (Monday), when the floating storage and regasification units in Cox's Bazar operated at full capacity and injected 980 mmcf LNG in the grid for the first time since its inception in 2018.
On the same day the power sector received 1,200 mmcf gas for electricity generation, which is also a record.
All of the 69 gas-based power plants in the country produced around 6,500MW electricity on that day.
The power supply situation, however, did not improve despite the given record production from gas-fired plants as production in the furnace oil- and coal-based plants dropped.
In the first week of May, furnace oil-based plants produced around 4,000MW electricity per day. But in the following weeks, the total production at 64 furnace oil-based plants was only 1,500MW in the daytime and around 2,500MW in the evening peak hour at night due to fuel shortage.
As the private power producers did not receive bills for around five months, they are failing to procure fuel to produce the required amount of electricity.
As of March 2023, private power producers' receivable to Bangladesh Power Development board was Tk18,000 Crore, according to Bangladesh Independent Power Producers' Association.
