Bangladesh Power Crisis Deepens Amid Heatwave, Load Shedding Introduced in Urban Areas

The power crisis in Bangladesh is worsening due to a heatwave, with rural areas experiencing prolonged and frequent outages. The government has decided to introduce load shedding in urban areas, including Dhaka city, where consumers will face 110MW of power cuts. State Minister for Power, Energy, and Mineral Resources Aninda Islam Amit explained that the decision was made to reduce the disparity between urban and rural areas, which have been experiencing different levels of outages.

The power generation in Bangladesh largely depends on imported gas, coal, and furnace oil, but supplies have fallen due to the US-Israel war on Iran. As a result, the Power Development Board (PDB) has had to increase power generation from costly furnace oil-based plants, which produced 3,000MW yesterday compared to around 1,000MW earlier this month.

According to PDB data, as of 8:00pm on April 23, the demand stood at 16,237MW while production was 13,988MW, leaving a shortfall of 2,249MW. The shortage exceeded 1,000MW almost every hour that day, peaking at 1,840MW at 9:00pm.

State Minister Aninda acknowledged that the crisis is not a short-term issue but the result of accumulated problems. He said gas demand is 3,800MMcf/d, while domestic production is 1,616MMcf/d and 950MMcf/d comes from imports, leaving a shortfall of 1,164MMcf/d.