Power was being restored across Bangladesh after the worst blackouts since 2014 cut supply to half the country, disrupting hospitals to road traffic and Internet networks.
Four of the country’s eight administrative divisions — home to about 96 million people — on Tuesday lost electricity supply after a transmission line was overloaded, “creating a cascading effect on other lines,” Power Grid Co of Bangladesh executive director Yeakub Elahi Chowdhury said
Some outages persisted for as long as eight hours.
Photo: Bloomberg
Supply was restored to much of Dhaka by about 9pm, and was being resumed across other regions, officials said.
“Engineers and technicians are working tirelessly,” the country’s power division, which is to form a committee to investigate the cause of the disruption, said in a statement.
“The power supply will be completely normal soon,” it said.
Bangladeshi State Minister for Power, Energy and Mineral Resources Nasrul Hamid earlier said that the blackouts had been triggered by “technical glitches” in the grid.
Traffic jammed unlit roads late on Tuesday and stores used candles and cellphone torches to serve customers.
As the outages dragged on for several hours, many apartment blocks in Dhaka were forced to switch off backup generators that had been running on expensive diesel fuel.
The disruptions — the most severe since a nationwide blackout in 2014 — follow months of difficulties for Bangladesh and other developing economies to secure energy supplies amid a global squeeze spurred by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
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