HTML clipboardStaff Correspondent

The Rural Electrification Board will start giving new power connections to residential consumers in villages from April 1 following the withdrawal of the government’s embargo.

The government imposed the restriction on new household electricity connections in rural areas in January 2007 to save electricity for urban areas due to a stagnant generation capacity.

Palli Bidyut Samities, which buy electricity from REB and supply to rural consumers, were swamped with hundreds of applications since the ban. ‘We have withdrawn the ban on REB as the power generation has increased in recent times and may go up further during the summer.

The REB will be cautious in giving new connections as some power shortage will still be there,’ Power Division secretary M Fouzul Kabir Khan said on Monday. Power officials said that the withdrawal, which coincides with the outset of the summer, was less likely to worsen the summer outages in cities and towns as the REB had been asked to go for cautious expansion of rural electrification.

Besides, they compared, rural clients do not consume as much electricity at their residences as those in urban areas. Though the average power generation in peak hours reached around 3800MW in last few days, up by 700 MW from the year-ago period, the power shortage during the summer is projected at 1000-1500MW, said officials of Power Development Board.

They said that the power generation could even reach the 4000MW mark, but could not say for sure whether the generation pace would sustain as most large power plants were very old and exposed to technical faults. Many units often trip during the summer when demand goes up.

The last summer witnessed severe power outages across the country as generation hovered around MW 3000-3600MW during March-July period against the peak demand of around 5000MW. PDB projected that demand would be around 5200MW this summer.

The power secretary, however, believed that the demand would be 4500MW this summer, when generation would be somewhere between 4000MW and 4200MW if there was no accident and gas shortage. Fouzul said that the chance of tripping of the power units would be less this summer as the power plants were given time to complete maintenance works. He claimed that the highest load shedding this summer might be around 500MW.

‘The trend in power generation in last few months shows that we will have 4000-4200MW during the summer, up from 3800MW now,’ the secretary said. Gas supply shortage now causes an average generation shortfall of 450MW.

The problem will be over in summer when power plants will get required gas as its supply to fertiliser plants will be curtailed after boro paddy harvest, Fouzul explained.

The average power generation in this February was 813MW higher than that of last February, he said. Besides, the under-construction 90MW Fenchuganj power plant and 20MW small independent plant at Bogra are likely to come into operation between March and April.

The six short-term power plants with around 200MW capacity are also scheduled to come into operation in March, he said. When his attention was drawn to the government’s Power System Master Plan that shows the peak demand of power in 2008 would be around 5500MW, Fouzul said, ‘The PSMP estimate was based on a calculation that all consumers would switch on their bulbs, TVs and other appliances at a time. But it doesn’t happen.’ ‘In my opinion the demand of power will be around 4500MW during the summer.’

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