Bangladesh Power Outages Persist Despite Increased Gas Supply
Power outages in Bangladesh persisted on Wednesday despite an increase in gas supply and additional power generation from gas-fired plants, which added 500 megawatts of electricity to the grid since Tuesday.
The country's power shortfall reached 2,713MW at 3pm on Wednesday, with the National Load Dispatch Center supplying 13,784MW against demand of 16,497MW. Several coal-fired plants and power imports from India's Tripura remained disrupted, contributing to the shortage.
The Matarbari power plant, one of the two units of which tripped at around 7am, was supplying around 400-450MW to the national grid, according to Power Grid Bangladesh PLC official Abul Barakat Md Badruddoza Khan. The Rampal and Payra coal-fired baseload plants were also generating below capacity.
Furnace oil- and diesel-fired plants increased their generation sharply as coal-fired generation and power imports declined. This resulted in a 19.5% increase in the average cost of power generation, with the per-unit generation cost rising to Tk 8.40 on Wednesday from Tk 7.03 two months earlier.
A senior Power Development Board official stated that the power shortfall could not be attributed solely to coal shortages, as shortages of fuel oil and gas were also affecting generation.