Mashrakha Jahan Mona 

 Prime Minister Tarique Rahman’s public acknowledgment of the ongoing national power crisis has drawn attention to systemic issues within the country's energy infrastructure, highlighting how long-standing structural deficits—rather than immediate administrative failure—continue to strain grid stability.

The government, which assumed office seven months ago, inherits an energy sector overburdened by rapid growth in industrial demand, aging distribution infrastructure, and acute technical bottlenecks. Despite this context, recent critical remarks in Parliament targeting the Senior Minister for Power have drawn sharp criticism from political observers, who note that isolating individual cabinet members overlooks systemic realities while undermining collective cabinet responsibility.

Analysis of the ongoing power outages, particularly across rural electrification networks managed by the Rural Electrification Board (REB), reveals that distribution vulnerabilities—rather than simple generation shortages—drive the bulk of supply disruptions.

A major technical challenge stems from expansive overhead distribution lines traversing rural terrain, where tree branches, severe weather, and lightning frequently cause single-line-to-ground faults—accounting for approximately 75 percent of rural distribution trips. Additionally, long feeder lines extending up to 80 or 90 kilometers suffer severe voltage drops, forcing automated load shedding or tripping to protect upstream equipment.

The lack of modern automated fault locators and auto-reclosers across many 33kV lines requires linemen to manually patrol dozens of kilometers to locate damaged insulators or blown drop-out fuses. This manual repair process significantly delays power restoration across rural sub-stations. Furthermore, transformer overloads driven by rising rural demand, combined with localized logistics bottlenecks in replacing spare parts, exacerbate frequent blackouts.

Experts and policy analysts emphasize that resolving the power crisis requires comprehensive modernization of the grid rather than political blame. Recommended interventions include integrating smart grid technologies, expanding fault-location infrastructure, constructing additional sub-stations to shorten long feeder lines, and maintaining decentralized spare part reserves to ensure rapid restoration.