Staff Reporter

Consumers in the areas under Dhaka Electric Supply Company Limited (Desco) experienced load shedding for over three hours on Saturday while those in the areas under Dhaka Power Supply Company Limited (DPDC) saw no power cuts.

According to official sources, a forced shutdown of a power plant in Ghorashal Power Station triggered such a huge load shedding in the Desco areas including Uttara, Gulshan, Baridhara, Bashundhara, Banani, Badda, Uttara khan, Dakkhin Khan, Agagaon, Mirpur, Kafrul, Kalayanpur, Khilkhet, Pallabi, Rupnagar and Tongi.

“We had to go for more than three hours of load shedding in different spells as we have been receiving less supply than any other days due to the shutdown of a power station in Ghorashal”, said Kawsar Ameer Ali, managing director of Desco.

He informed that Ghorashal power station is one of the major sources of power from which Desco receives power supply.

“Following the shutdown of a power plant in Ghorashal station, power supply to Desco has come down to 750 MW on Saturday against the demand of 1038 MW,” the Desco chief executive told UNB.

As a result, he said, the Desco had to go for about 278 MW of load shedding to manage the situation.

Meanwhile, officials of the Bangladesh Power Development Board (BPDB) informed that 365 MW unit -7 of the Ghorashal power station went out of order at 4:49 am on Saturday triggering a huge shortage in power supply.

Shamim Hasan, BPDB director, public relations, however, said the power supply situation was better on Saturday as there was projection of scheduled load shedding of 1242 MW while the projected generation was 12,758 MW against a demand of 14,000 MW.

The DPDC in a message through its official website noted that there is no scheduled load shedding in its area which supplies electricity mainly south, south-east, south-west and central parts of Dhaka city.

The government started daily one hour area-based load-shedding across Bangladesh from Tuesday in a bid to tackle the ongoing power crisis.