Power was restored in most of Bangladesh on Sunday, a day after the impoverished, energy-starved nation was plunged into a nationwide blackout, officials said.The blackout was the country’s worst since a 2007 cyclone knocked out the national grid for several hours.
Electricity was cut across Bangladesh at around noon Saturday after the transmission line experienced a “technical glitch” that led to a cascade of failures throughout the national power grid, with power plants and substations shutting down, said Masum-Al-Beruni, managing director of the state-run Power Grid Company of Bangladesh Ltd.
After an evening spent in the dark, most of the residents of Dhaka, the capital of more than 10 million people, got electricity back on by 1 a.m. Sunday, said Mohammad Nasir Uddin, a control room official of the Dhaka Power Distribution Co. Power was restored in other major cities too, but it was not clear how many people were still without electricity.
Tawfiq-e-Elahi Chowdhury, energy adviser to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, said late Saturday that he expected the supply would be back to normal by Sunday afternoon.
Dhaka’s hospitals and the international airport continued to operate after the blackout Saturday with emergency generators. But many offices normally open had to send their employees home.
Bangladesh has tried to improve its energy situation, extending access to electricity to about 3.45 million more people since 2008. Last year, it started to import electricity from India through the 400-kilovolt transmission line, which runs from Baharampur in the Indian state of West Bengal to the town of Bheramara in southwestern Bangladesh.
It also has signed agreements with energy companies in Russia, Japan, China and the United States to build power plants and improve energy infrastructure.