Dhaka [Bangladesh]: Bangladesh’s national power transmission grid failed on Tuesday afternoon, causing a nationwide blackout and leaving millions of people in the dark.
The grid which failed at 2 pm local time caused the widespread blackout, barring some northern parts of the country, Dhaka Tribune reported. The transmission line tripped somewhere in the eastern part of the country, especially in districts on the east of Jamuna river, according to the officials at Bangladesh Power Development Board (BPDB) and Power Grid Company of Bangladesh (PGCB).
The power supply will be fully restored by 8 pm, said Bangladesh’s State Minister of ICT Division Zunaid Ahmed Palak.
Bangladesh’s national trade organization, representing all mobile telecom operators, said telecommunication services may disrupt some parts of the country due to a national power grid failure.
“Due to national power grid failure, telecommunication services may disrupt in some parts of the country. We are sorry for the inconvenience,” AMTOB said in a statement.
Bangladesh State Minister for Power and Energy Nasrul Hamid told United News Bangladesh that the power supply is expected to be fully restored by 7 pm, according to Dhaka Tribune.
“We have already restored electricity supply at Bangabhaban and Ganabhaban and also some parts in Mirpur and other areas,” he said.
Back in May 2017, a similar incident of grid failure happened in 32 districts. At least 130 million people in Bangladesh were without power on Tuesday afternoon after a grid failure caused widespread blackouts, the government’s power utility company said.
More than 80 per cent of the country was hit by the sudden outage shortly after 2 pm local time, according to the Power Development Board.
Apart from some locations in Bangladesh’s northwest, “the rest of the country is without power”, agency spokesman Shamim Ahsan told AFP.
Ahsan said 130m people or more were without electricity and it remained unclear what had caused the fault.