Power Crisis: No Good News in Near Future

The power crisis is acute and there seems to remedy in the near future

by Naseer Ahmed

I have been living in an apartment since 2000. After purchasing the apartment we spent an extra amount for an IPS. As there was also arrangement for generator during the load shedding period we could light three tube lights. Previous load shedding was never one or two times per day and we did not feel the necessity of an IPS.

But now gone are those good old days. This year because of the reason that over the last seven years there was no significant additional generation of power, the cumulative impact is being faced by us, the power consumers, since the beginning of the sweating summer days.

According to PDB, mainly because of the non-availability of gas in our different gas-based power plants there is less generation of electricity to the tune of 560 MW. Because of maintenance and other problems there is production loss of another 300 MW. In this burning reality against the present demand of electricity of around 5000 MW, the actual generation of electricity is around 3500 to 3600 MW per day. So, there is a power deficit of minimum 1500 MW compared to 700-800 MW during the last year.

Now in the present hot and humid days in our major cities life has indeed become miserable. Along with Dhaka city, other major cities in the load shedding area are Mymensingh, Sylhet, Comilla, Chittagong, Khulna, Barisal, Rajshahi and Rangpur. In some areas like my area of residence, per day load shedding of 5 to 6 times has become a normal phenomenon. In one day there was load shedding of 10 times and because of high insistence of my wife and the ensuing HSC exam of my younger son I had to go to Rahim Afrooz to buy an IPS. I found that in buying the IPS also there was heavy rush and the company was almost out of supply. And after waiting for about two weeks I could make arrangement of a 280 Watt IPS with a provision of 2 tube lights and 2 fans with at around Tk 15,000. I made this alternative arrangement but when there is continuous load shedding as we are observing nowadays, even IPS system with back up of only two hours and charged by normal electricity will also be bound to fail.

From one newspaper report (Jai Jai Din 12 May, 2008) we learnt that as per PDB within a few months the power demand may rise to 5400 MW to 5500 MW. In this scenario, if all the units of existing 28 power plants including private power plants (IPP) run simultaneously the demand will still not be met. In such a reality if there is sudden closure or shutdown of any power plant, then the problem becomes acute, as we are facing now.

Steps must be taken to mitigate the suffering of the people (better to say of the fortunate or unfortunate people like us). As per government statistics 41 percent people have access to electricity but in reality real consumers are not more than 29 percent of the total population of the country. Also more than 50 percent of generated electricity is being consumed in the capital city alone; there is no immediate good news. Informed sources say that before next December the suffering of the concerned people will not be mitigated. The measures taken by the government to tackle the power crisis will start yielding results after December, 2008.

We know that everyday in respect of our electricity generation around 46 percent of natural gas production is being consumed. There is at present severe gas crisis in Chittagong area; if this crisis is not overcome the closed power units of Chittagong will not be able to resume operation.

We heard that to overcome the immediate crisis there is a road map (like our road map to democracy) for installing 26 new power plants for reaching power generation level of 7000 MW. As per this program the growth rate of the demand of electricity is around 10 percent per year. To ensure this demand generation capacity should be at least 7000 MW with area access of 52 percent of the entire country.

In this country of casual planning, mismanagement and less coordination we do not know whether this road map will be efficiently materialized or not. We have already forgotten our previous ambitious road map of electricity for all by 2020 (which had a target of 16000 MW of electricity per day).

The writer is the MD of BIZEX Bangladesh Ltd. He also teaches at the MBA program of East West University, NUB and ULAB, Dhaka. Email: bizex@bangla.net