Country reels from worst blackout for Indo-BD power inter-connector glitch

Normal life and business were disrupted as the country suffered the 'worst ever' power outage after the cross-border inter-connector bringing electricity from neighbouring India tripped on Saturday morning, official sources said.
A senior official of the Power Grid Company of Bangladesh (PGCB) said power supply was disrupted all over the country when the Bangladesh-India power interconnection line, used for import of around 470 megawatts of electricity, tripped at 11:30am.
This technical glitch disrupted the entire transmission system subsequently as a cascading effect, knocking down country's overall electricity generation to almost 'zero' level.
As life and business continued to reel from the nationwide blackout, the government could not confirm when the electricity supply would be restored.
"We can't commit when the country's overall electricity-supply system will be restored," Managing Director of the state-run Power Grid Company of Bangladesh Masud-Al-Beruni told the FE at night.
But PGCB team is working to bring back normalcy, he said.
As to how such a great damage was done, he said non-operation of the protection systems in the country's transmission line led to the blackout.
Another official said the transmission system collapsed again in the evening when the authorities were trying to resume electricity generation in some power plants.
Most of the state-owned power-distribution companies did not follow requests from the central load-dispatch centre to keep the electricity load within limits, resulting in the second-time grid collapse, an engineer said.
The government constituted an investigation committee to ascertain the reason for the power-grid breakdown.
Overall electricity generation was only 300-400MW on Saturday evening, which is hardly 7.0 per cent of the country's average electricity output of 6,500 megawatts, a senior official of the state-run Bangladesh Power Development Board (BPDB) said.
Some areas in Sylhet, Chittagong and some parts in the capital, however, had got back electricity supply till time, said the PGCB top official.
The blackout has been affecting all sorts of activities: medicare at hospitals, work at businesses, offices and households.
Mobile telephone networks have also been affected with the nationwide outage as the performance of mobile-network equipment had been sliding till the filing of this report.
Many businesses houses, industries and shopping malls were forced to shut operations due to the nagging power failure.
Automated teller machine (ATM) booths of the country's commercial banks were also out of operation, pushing the clients into trouble.
Hospital intensive-care units were functioning on backup generators. Dhaka international airport was also running on generator fuel, said sources.
Backup power systems like instant power supply (IPS) and uninterrupted power system (UPS) failed to provide electricity in the absence of sufficient grid supply, consumers said.
Association of Mobile Telecom Operators of Bangladesh (AMTOB) urged the government to provide alternative energy sources like diesel for at least important areas to keep the mobile phones operative.
"Otherwise, telecom network will collapse after a certain time as the network depends on electricity," AMTOB secretary-general TIM Nurul Kabir told the FE at night.
Usually, the operators have 5 to 10 hours' electricity backup to handle usual load shading, but it will be very difficult for them to keep the networks functional for a longer time.
The country's largest mobile-phone operator, Grameen Phone (GP), has acknowledged of having network problems out of the blanket blackout.
"Further prolonged recovery from the national power grid disruption may cause some network limitations on operators' voice and/or data services in a few select areas of the country. We have been running our full operations on secondary generators and backup batteries since 11:30am today," said a GP spokesman in the evening.
A spokesman for Robi said around 5.0 per cent of Robi networks were experiencing outages. "Our team is working towards providing uninterrupted connectivity."
This is the first time the country was left without power since 2007 when Bangladesh was hit by devastating super-cyclone Sidr, said the PGCB top brass.
The November 15, 2007 powerful cyclone tore down Bangladesh's entire power system, resulting in failure of the national power grid.
The entire Bangladesh went without electricity as most of the power plants had tripped, causing a complete blackout across the country.
Electricity-distribution lines, poles and transformers were damaged in the gusty winds and trees uprooted by the winds fell on the lines during the cyclone in most city areas, especially in the southern part.
Bangladesh began importing electricity from India in September 2013 through a 400-kilovolt (KV) transmission line that runs from Baharampur in the Indian state of West Bengal to the town of Bheramara in southwestern Bangladesh.
The country was hit by the electricity blackout after a transmission line bringing electricity through the high-voltage direct current (HDVC) substation from India failed, the sources said.
A PGCB substation in Bheramara synchronises the HDVC electricity to alternating current (AC) systems before throwing it into the national power grid.
BPDB purchases the electricity being supplied by Indian NTPC Vidyut Vyapar Nigam Ltd (NVVN), a wholly-owned subsidiary of India's National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC).
The government has planned to import around 500MW more electricity in next couple of years.

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