The power grid has failed and completely collapsed in Bangladesh leaving around 140 million people without power. Nearly everyone is left without power as of Tuesday afternoon, Bangladesh time.
The grid failed at 2 pm (08:00 GMT) and, apart from parts of Bangladesh’s northwest, “the rest of the country is without power”, Power Development Board spokesman Shamim Ahsan said on Tuesday, according to a report by Al Jazeera.
#UPDATE About 140 million people in Bangladesh were without power on Tuesday afternoon after a grid failure caused widespread blackouts, the government’s power utility company said pic.twitter.com/j954v6itQr
— AFP News Agency (@AFP) October 4, 2022
Officials of the state-run Bangladesh Power Development Board said power transmission failed somewhere in the eastern part of the country.
All power plants tripped and electricity was cut in the capital Dhaka and other big cities, said Hasan.
The country’s power grid malfunctioned at around 2 p.m. (0800 GMT) on Tuesday, leading to blackouts across 75-80% of the Bangladesh, Bangladesh Power Development Board official Shameem Hasan told Reuters.
Bangladesh, which gets three quarters of its electricity from imported natural gas, has been facing frequent power cuts this year due to its inability to address higher power demand.
The country has rationed some gas supplies amid high global prices driven up by Russia’s war in Ukraine. The government vowed frugal spending after reporting a record fiscal deficit last year.
Over a third of the country’s 77 gas-powered units were short of fuel, government data showed on Tuesday.
Grid failures generally happen when there is a high mismatch between demand and supply, potentially due to unexpected or sudden changes in power use patterns.
GARMENT FACTORIES HIT
Operations at Bangladesh’s lucrative export-oriented garment industry, which supply to clients such as Walmart (WMT.N), Gap Inc (GPS.N), H&M (HMb.ST), VF Corp (VFC.N), Zara and American Eagle Outfitters (AEO.N) were hit by the power outage on Tuesday.
“To cope with the (power) crisis, we have been using generators. Today’s outage was unpredictable. We had to shut our offices,” because generators can not run for long periods, Shahidullah Azim, Vice President of the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association told Reuters.
The association represents members that have more than 4,500 garment factories nationwide. Bangladesh is the world’s second-biggest garment exporter after China.
“We can’t run factories without power,” Azim added.
Zunaid Ahmed Palak, a junior minister in Bangladesh, said on Facebook it was “risky to restore (power) with a heavy load”.
The load on the power grid generally increases in the evenings in Bangladesh, when citizens return home after work. Demand growth in the recent years has largely been driven by the residential segment.
“If the stability of the system is fairly satisfactory, the power lines of all area of Dhaka will be activated. We sincerely apologise for the inconvenience,” Palak said.
The Association of Mobile Telecom Operators of Bangladesh said on Tuesday mobile and internet services may be disrupted in some parts of the country due to the national power grid failure.
Engineers were trying to determine where and why the glitches happened and it could take hours to restore the system, he said. –Al Jazeera
The power grid in Bangladesh is not the only grid that is having trouble. The Epoch Times recently reported that the United States needs to spend trillions of dollars in upgrades on its power grid to accommodate renewable energy demands.
The Cuban government has also asked the Biden administration for a helping hand with immediate assistance to help the devastated island nation get through the dire consequences of the impacts of supercharged Category three hurricane Ian.
Cuba’s electrical grid – decades-old and in desperate need of modernization, has been faltering for months with blackouts an everyday event across much of the island.
But officials said the storm had proven to be too much for the system, provoking a failure that shut off the lights for the island’s 11.3 million people.
“The system was already operating under complex conditions with the passage of Hurricane Ian,” said Lazaro Guerra, technical director of Cuba’s Electricity Union. “There is no electricity service in any part of the country right now.” -Reuters
The power grid has failed and completely collapsed in Bangladesh leaving around 140 million people without power. Nearly everyone is left without power as of Tuesday afternoon, Bangladesh time.