The 1,320MW Rampal power plant closed down for the seventh time this year on Sunday as the power crisis worsened amidst a heatwave setting in over nearly a fourth of Bangladesh.
Of the seven times, the Rampal power plant, a Bangladesh-India joint venture, shut its operation four times due to fuel shortage, with the longest shutdown lasting 34 days since January 14.
The Rampal power plant has its first unit in operation since late December, 2022 and largely operated at nearly its half capacity – 350MW – because of coal shortage triggered by the dollar crisis.
With a 24,911MW installed power generation capacity, Bangladesh has been struggling to meet 14,000MW electricity demand.
The Rampal power plant authorities did not answer calls made over the phone for comments but the public relations office at the Power Development Board confirmed the shutdown of the plant due to coal crisis at 3:30am on Sunday.
The power plant will not resume operation before August 8, said the PDB officials.
On Sunday, according to the data released by the Power Grid Company of Bangladesh, power outage increased, with over 1,000MW of power shortage recorded at most of the hour of the day, a situation that was not seen in the past couple of days.
The peak power crisis of 1,245MW was recorded at 1:00am on Sunday.
About a month ago, the 1,320MW Payra power plant, a joint venture between Bangladesh and China, came back in operation after 20 days of suspension of power production due to coal shortage.
‘As if this is a game – one power plant comes online while another one goes out,’ said M Shamsul Alam, energy adviser, Consumers Association of Bangladesh.
‘Paying for a capacity that cannot be used is not fair,’ he said.
Government high ups, power plant authorities and PDB officials promise uninterrupted power supply next time when a power plant is closed down.
The government had been saying for about a month that the power crisis was likely to be minimised since the second unit of the 1,600MW Adani-Godda power plant was ready to supply power.
But electricity supply from the Adani power plant hovered about 750MW.
The first unit of 1,200MW Matarbari thermal coal power plant started test transmission on July 29.
The 600MW first unit will supply 150MW until August 2.
‘We plan to start commercial operation after six months of test transmission,’ said Abul Kalam Azad, project director, Matarbari power plant.
Bangladesh’s power sector depends overwhelmingly on imported fossil fuel while frequent closures of the crucial thermal power plant expose the severity of the current dollar crisis the country has been going through.
Bangladesh spent $3,600 crore in power sector, mostly in generation, leading to a huge power overcapacity and frequent increase in power price.
The US-based Energy Information Administration said in a recent forecast that the authorities in Bangladesh might need to continue power cut until the middle of 2025.
Rampal shutdown happened for mechanical failure in April, June and July and coal shortage in January, February and April.
After shutting down some diesel-based power plants and enforcing rotating power outage in July 2022, Bangladesh had looked up to coal to overcome the energy crisis.
But the plan did not work out even after fuel prices dropped to almost pre-pandemic level because of the dollar crisis.
Bangladesh Meteorological Department said on Sunday that a mild heatwave gripped 20 out of its 44 weather stations across Bangladesh.
The areas being swept by the heatwave are the entire divisions of Rajshahi and Sylhet and the regions of Dhaka, Tangail, Madaripur, Rangpur, Netrakona, Sitakunda, Rangamati, Feni, Cumilla, Mongla, Jashore and Chuadanga.
The country’s highest maximum day temperature of 37C was recorded in Rangpur and Feni followed by 36.7C in Dhaka.
‘There may be scattered rain at some places but an overall hot feeling will remain throughout the weekend,’ said meteorologist Bazlur Rashid.
