Fundamentals of power supply!
The state has inherited and taken up this critical business of power supply, a vital component of economic function in trade, commerce and industry; not to speak of its vital role in all spheres of our daily life! Priority of this vital sector which is as critical as defence has remained a persistent problem in Bangladesh!
While demand for electric power has gone on increasing, and will continue to do so, its production capacity has remained more or less static! This is an unbelievable state of affairs! Instead of expanding power production capabilities, our governments in the last six years or so have been literally "twiddling their thumbs"! Further, the decline in availability of natural gas has only aggravated the problem !
For effective and stable power supply, our generation capacity needs to be rapidly expanded today without any let or hindrance! The government should declare an emergency for power generation and distribution matters undertaken either by the government or private sector! Alongside, our power generation capacity vis-à-vis uninterrupted meeting of power demand needs to be rapidly rationalised, which is woefully inadequate today!
Let us assume that power need of Bangladesh is, say, 5000MW. Then we must have the generation capacity of at least 20 percent more! This comes to 6000MW! Only then we can ensure uniform round the clock power supply, without any interruption at any time; and the ugly word 'load shedding' can be dropped from our everyday vocabulary!
This extra 1000MW capacity is essential to ensure regular repair, maintenance and overhaul of the plant and equipment! These plants should normally not be over ten years old, while more than half of our present generation capacity running (un-uniformly) is older than this! These are to be taken off line for at least six to twelve months for total overhaul and upgrading. Otherwise, we will only be wasting scarce imported fuel and unnecessarily increase the cost of production of power, and, of course, the misery of 'load shedding' will continue! The only relief may be in the intensity, frequency and duration of the distasteful "load shedding" that has become a common event today! To really get rid of the problem, we need to install a generation capacity of at least 2500MW of new power plants, which may take with all urgency, say four to five years, and by that time another say 2000MW will be needed! We must therefore gear up for installing on an average 1500MW of new generation capacity every calendar year over the next four/five years! One can just visualise where we have landed up power-wise!
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