Shawdesh dEsk:

Yet another power plant — that at Banshkhali — was shut down because of fuel shortage on Thursday evening, as rain started to bring the temperature down and reduced the electricity demand on Friday noon by more than 3,000 MW.

Overall, the power crisis improved because of the  rain, though it persisted even when the electricity demand dropped to as low as 11,300 MW, the lowest power demand since May 29, at 12:00pm on Friday with 264 MW of load-shedding.

Crisis loomed large over the power sector anyway with the coal-based Banshkhali power plant, which was reportedly brought into operation to compensate for the absence of the Payra power plant, going out of operation at 10:45pm on Thursday.

The first unit of the 1,320MW Banshkhali power plant had been on test transmission since June 5 supplying between 200 MW and 350 MW of electricity.

The media wing of the Power Development Board confirmed that the power plant was shut down due to coal shortage.

PDB officials said that the power plant was not ready to roll into operation but did anyway following requests from the government embarrassed by record power shortage in the first week of June, particularly after the 1,320MW Payra power plant went out of operation on June 5 because of coal shortage.

The Banshkhali power plant’s deputy project director Mustafizur Rahman, however, said that they were test-transmitting and the disruption was not because of coal shortage.

Test transmission comes ahead of the commissioning of a power plant. A power plant is paid for fuel cost during test transmission.

The commissioning of the Banshkhali power plant was delayed by about a year because the transmission line was not ready yet.

Mustafiz said that they supplied electricity to parts of Chattogram during their first days of test transmission as the national grid was not ready to take the power to Dhaka.

The power demand is expected to fluctuate over the next week depending on rain as weather forecasters predicted uncertain monsoon activities until the second half of the month.

‘Monsoon has advanced to parts of Chattogram and Sylhet but might take another week or 10 days before setting in over entire Bangladesh,’ said meteorologist Toriful Newaz Kabir.

Meanwhile, a cyclonic storm over the Arabian Sea, a major contributor to the monsoon wind, was holding back monsoon from advancing in full force over land in Bangladesh, weather forecasters said.

The cyclonic storm is likely to remain active until June 14.

A weak monsoon means long hours of heat and a steep rise in electricity demand.

At 12:00pm on Thursday, the electricity demand was 14,500 MW, which dropped to just 11,300 MW at the same hour on Friday.

Dhaka saw its day temperature drop to 32.1C on Friday.

On Friday, Bangladesh’s highest temperature of 37C was recorded in Chuadanga. A mild heatwave was prevailing over the Rajshahi, Chuadanga and Pabna districts.

The Bangladesh Meteorological Department in a weather bulletin issued at 9:00 am on Friday predicted rise in temperature in 72 hours.

On Friday, the country’s highest rainfall of 84 mm was recorded in Tangail.

Dhaka recorded 47mm rain on the day.