The country-wide power grid failure and blackout for 10 hours (on November 01, 2014) have shaken the confidence of the people in the power system. Thanks to the engineers and technicians in the Power Grid Company who managed, through their tireless efforts, to bring back power supply almost to normal by midnight on the same day. The government has already constituted two committees to investigate into the reasons for such an untoward situation. Until the technical committees complete the investigations and report the reasons behind the longest power system breakdown, diverse speculations will continue to prevail in public minds.
Indeed, major power system transmission and distribution failure is not unprecedented in other countries of the world. But such a prolonged power outage, besides affecting the socio-economic activities of the people, creates a sense of insecurity across all social segments. Traffic management in the city streets was somehow managed without major trouble as our traffic management system depends little on electronic signal control and command systems. But the media reports suggest that communication system suffered as back-up power could not support the system that long. Although ours is a comparatively small (about 7,000 MW) power transmission and distribution system, the 10 hour-long black-out caused serious disruptions to our daily life and livelihood. Human suffering was immense. The extent of human sufferings could be felt when hospitals and clinics were without power supply for such a prolonged period of time.
Technical interpretations of the national grid failures indicate that the desired balance between generation and consumption of power suddenly mismatched which triggered the cascading effect on the system. As a result, one after another power generation units connected with the national power grid (approximately 100 power generation units are hooked to the power grid lines) automatically ceased to operate and supply of power collapsed. The automatic system load management devices, which should have detected the fault and managed the load (by synchronising the generation and load distribution from the system), failed to respond timely. Also, the technical experts and operators, who monitor and guide the synchronised power transmission and distribution system at the National Load Dispatch Centre in Dhaka, were unable to manage the sudden system failure.
Published reports suggest that the required balance could not be maintained and synchronised among the development initiatives for power generation, transmission and distribution systems in the country for various reasons. Some sections of the national grid remains overloaded. Some power system management experts fear that the undue pressures from different sides may have guided to bypass the automatic protective devices for transmission and distribution system at some places in the power grid system. As a result, it is not unlikely that the automatic protective devices failed to respond to the sudden mismatch in the power supply at a given frequency.
Power system experts admit that activities in the country's power generation, transmission and distribution systems do not always work in a coordinated and coherent fashion. A sensitive system management, like the national grid for power transmission and distribution, should not allow slack coordination between the national load dispatch centre and the power generation units.
It has become obvious that more than threefold growth of power generation capacity in the country since 2009 demanded major improvement in upgrading and atomisation of power transmission and distribution systems. But the unprecedented country-wide 10-hour blackout has demonstrated that the required up-gradation of power transmission and distribution system was not done. The technical committees constituted after the country-wide power grid failure in 2007 made some recommendations to improve the system. Unfortunately, the recommendations were shelved instead of being implemented.
Also, there are shortages of technically trained manpower in the power transmission management system. Finance Minister AMA Muhith confirmed to the media that there are weaknesses in our power transmission system which should be blamed for the unprecedented crisis. State Mister for Power, Energy and Mineral Resources Nasrul Hamid informed the press that his ministry was set to engage a team of consultants to assess the state of the national power transmission system shortly.
Bangladesh economy has grown significantly and the country can no longer afford to ignore the need for improved and modernised power system. Within the next couple of years, major coal-fired power plants in Matarbari, Moheshkhali, Rampal, Bagerhat, Paira, Patuakhali are scheduled to supply power to the national grid. In addition, Ruppoor Nuclear Power Plant in Iswardi, Pabna will also be supplying power to the national grid once the project is implemented in 2021. India has already agreed to supply an additional 500 MW power (currently nearly 450 MW power is imported from India through Bahrampur-Bheramara transmission systems) through Bahrampur-Bheramara transmission system. The SAARC regional power grid, set to be developed in the future, will enable Bangladesh to import power from Nepal and Bhutan. Therefore, power transmission system up-gradation and efficient automatised management cannot be delayed indefinitely. Especially, the nuclear power generation initiatives demand immediate time-bound plans for power system improvement to be implemented before the nuclear power reactors come into operation in the country. Let the Saturday's nation-wide black out prompt our policy planners to take immediate action plans.
The writer, a mining engineer,
writes on energy and environment issues.
mushfiq41@yahoo.com
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