Editorial
Power shutdown too frequent
Find some relief for the consumers
Even for a people accustomed to living with reduced power supply, especially in summer, the latest frequency of electricity outages in the country comes as something of a rude shock. That is because, for more than a year now, we had got used to fairly an even supply of electricity through what we understand to have been better load management. But quite obviously, the gap between power generation and distribution has yawned so much that there is little room for manoeuvering.
In an ideal situation, one would have expected that various localities would be notified about the load-shedding timings to give people a lead time for preparations. But obviously when power is shut down for quite a few times in a single night can the people be effectively forewarned of a coming outage.
Going back to power deficit issue, if we take Saturday as test case, the official power demand was 4,500 megawatt against power generation worth 3,500 megawatt making for a deficit of 1000 megawatt. A large part of the shortfall -- 800 megawatt -- could, however, have been avoided had the gas supply been normal to power plants. But the real power crunch is worse than the official figures suggest. The unofficial power demand being 5,900 megawatt, the deficit effectively for the day stood at 2,400 megawatt.
There is a silver lining around the cloud though. A thousand megawatt of power was set aside for irrigation during the boro season through providing special connections to farmers. With the boro crop harvested in a month's time, that 1000 megawatt of electricity will be freed up for use elsewhere.
Unless there is a radical improvement in gas supply, the hopes for adding to the power generation capacity will be dashed. For instance, new gas-fired power plants with nearly 1000 megawatt capacity are expected to be commissioned this year. What will be the fate of such projects if the gas supply situation does not improve in good time.
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