Situation unlikely to improve in 3-4 months

There is no immediate solution to curb the frequency of the ongoing power cuts in the country as the government has reduced fuel imports to conserve the foreign currency reserve, says the prime minister’s energy adviser Dr Tawfiq-e-Elahi Chowdhury.

“We’ll have to wait for three to four more months before the load-shedding situation improves,” he told reporters after a seminar organized by the Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies (BIDS) at a hotel in Dhaka on Sunday.

He said, “We hope the problem will be solved once power starts coming from India’s Jharkhand and Rampal. Rampal may start producing electricity by the end of this year and power from Jharkhand may start coming at the beginning of the next year.

“As such, we’ll have to wait for three-four months. Power demand will also decrease as winter begins. Until then, it’s unlikely that the power supply situation will improve very soon.”

Tawfiq urged everyone to be a little bit more patient and try to be more aware to avoid any waste of power. Developed nations like the UK and Germany are also now experiencing four-five hours of load-shedding due to the energy crisis created by the Russia-Ukraine war.

In the meantime, the power supply in the national grid has faced disruptions and it usually takes eight to 10 hours to fix. The government is tirelessly working to resolve the ongoing crisis, he said.

He said there was a plan to import 1,600 megawatts of electricity from an Adani Group power plant in India and add them to the national grid along with 1,000 MW from the Rampal power plant.

But the transmission lines for these two projects are not ready yet and it will take three-four months to get them up and running.

Tawfiq added that the government is also working on getting some natural gas from a field in Bhola and adding 1,000 MW from solar energy sources to the national grid.

Moreover, there is a plan to replace some existing diesel-run irrigation pumps with a solar-run irrigation system, he said.