Rain eases load-shedding, but bad weather keeps power outages alive

Persistent rainfall over the past week has brought welcome relief to the country's strained power system by sharply reducing electricity demand and almost eliminating load-shedding.

Yet, despite the comfortable supply situation, consumers in parts of Dhaka and other areas of the country continue to face intermittent power cuts.

Power officials say the weather-related faults in the transmission and distribution network are causing disruption in some pockets of the country despite having no significant supply shortfall.

Heavy rain, thunderstorms and lightning have been damaging electrical infrastructure, toppling trees onto power lines, tilting poles, triggering short circuits and disrupting substations, causing temporary outages in affected areas.

An analysis of Power Grid Bangladesh data, along with information gathered from officials at the Power Division, Bangladesh Power Development Board (BPDB) and Rural Electrification Board (REB), shows that actual load-shedding has remained negligible for most of the past week.

Since 5 July, nationwide load-shedding has stayed below 200MW for most hours of those past days. On 11 July, when electricity demand peaked at 14,829MW around 8pm, the grid supplied 14,684MW, leaving only 145MW of load-shedding.

Even on the same day, the highest load-shedding was recorded at 12 midnight, when 446MW was shed against demand of 14,466MW.

The power supply improved further on 12 July. Grid data shows there was virtually no load-shedding between 7am and 2pm, except for a brief 30MW shortfall at 8am.

The only notable exception during the week came on the night of 8 July, when load-shedding reached 1,332MW at midnight against demand of 14,758MW before easing to 1,249MW an hour later as demand declined.

The figures indicate that Bangladesh currently has sufficient electricity to meet demand as cooler temperatures have significantly reduced the need for air conditioning.

Why there are still facing power outages

"The outages people are experiencing are mostly localised disruptions caused by bad weather rather than a shortage of electricity," a power division official told TBS.

The explanation is also supported by Power Grid Bangladesh's internal Event Summary, which records the causes behind interruptions to the national grid.

On 11 July alone, several weather-related incidents temporarily knocked parts of the network out of service. At 8:30am, bad weather disrupted a 30MW supply from the Natore 132/33kV substation. The fault was cleared about two hours later.

Just over an hour later, at 9:34am, lightning and stormy weather affected the Niamatpur 132/33kV substation before electricity was restored at 10:46am.

Another interruption occurred at 2:42pm when a circuit breaker failed during a thunderstorm, forcing 123MW offline though restored the supply within just 12 minutes.

Not every interruption was weather-related. At 1:46pm, about 50MW went out of service during scheduled busbar maintenance at the Shahjibazar 132/33kV substation before supply resumed at 3pm.

Officials say planned maintenance work coupled with bad weather inflicted by lightning and thunder forced some neighbourhoods to endure power outage despite power supply.

Talking with TBS yesterday (12 July), BPDB Chairman Md Rezaul Karim, said, there is no significant load-shedding in the country as long as the current cooler weather persists.

"However, some pockets are still experiencing outages because of problems at local substations caused by bad weather as well as scheduled maintenance work" he added.

The narrowing gap of power demand-supply is also found in Power Grid's zone-wise supply data too.

During the evening peak at 7:30pm on 11 July, national demand stood at nearly 14,998MW, while total load-shedding was only 130MW across the country.

Only two of the country's nine power zones experienced supply shortfall.

Dhaka recorded just 81MW of load-shedding against demand of 5,432MW, while Mymensingh had only 49MW against demand of 1,283MW. The remaining seven zones – Chattogram, Cumilla, Sylhet, Khulna, Barisal, Rajshahi, Rangpur were effectively free of load-shedding.

The current situation is a sharp contrast to just around two weeks ago, when scorching temperatures pushed the power supply under severe strain.

On 28 June, the Bangladesh Meteorological Department recorded the country's highest temperature of 37.3 degrees Celsius in Rajshahi, while Dhaka reached 35.4 degrees Celsius.

Cooling demand surged across the country, widening the gap between electricity demand and available supply.

Grid data shows that at 3pm that day, it experienced 2,888MW of load-shedding against demand of 16,495MW, with generation limited to 13,607MW.

The pressure continued well into the night.

Load-shedding stood at 3,348MW at 1am, climbed to 3,431MW at 2am, remained above 3,300MW at 3am, and stayed above 3,000MW until dawn before gradually easing after 6am.

Officials at the National Load Dispatch Centre (NLDC) say hot, humid nights keep electricity demand elevated because air conditioners continue running for longer hours.

Former power and energy adviser Muhammad Fouzul Kabir Khan highlighted the impact earlier this year, saying on 24 February that air conditioning alone accounts for between 4,000MW and 5,000MW of electricity demand.

NLDC and BPDB officials say another major contributor to nighttime demand is the widespread charging of battery-powered rickshaws, which usually begins around 11pm and continues until about 8am, keeping the load high even at midnight to 7-8 am in the morning before the auto-rickshaw drivers hit the streets.