Tripping of the Bheramara sub-station, inefficiency of national power grid maintenance staff and widespread mismanagement have all contributed to the nationwide blackout on November 1, a government probe committee has found.
The committee, comprising one former and seven current high-ranked officials of the Power Ministry, are supposed to place their findings today in the form of what they are saying is a “primary progress report.”
However, seeking anonymity, a member of the committee told the Dhaka Tribune yesterday that there was some confusion about how and to what extent they were going to reveal their findings.
Even committee chief Ahmed Kaikaus, an additional secretary of the ministry, told the Dhaka Tribune that they were going to seek more time for further investigation.
Asked why they had missed today’s report submission deadline, he said: “We visited several power plants today [yesterday]. That is why we have failed to meet the deadline.”
State Minister for Power Nasrul Hamid told reporters at his secretariat office yesterday that they were still trying to find out whether there was any human error on the part of the national load management authority that had resulted in the countrywide blackout.
On November 1, two collapses in the national electricity grid caused hours of power outage in the country. The first collapse occurred around 11:28am and the authorities took until the next morning to fully restore power supply across the country.
From November 3-5, the committee visited, collected data and talked to the officials of the National Load Desptach Centre (NLDC) in the capital’s Aftabnagar, the Bheramara High Voltage DC Sub-station (HVDC) in Kushtia and several key power stations in Brahmanbaria’s Ashuganj and Narayanganj’s Haripur.
Findings
Ahmed Kaikaus told the Dhaka Tribune yesterday that after visiting the Bheramara High Voltage DC Sub-station (HVDC), they were now sure it had tripped on that day.
On the day of the countrywide blackout, a high official of the Power Grid Company of Bangladesh (PGCB), the authority that owns and runs the national electricity grid, said the key power stations in Ashuganj tripped as a consequence of the Bheramara tripping.
However, probe committee chief Kaikaus said they had visited Ashuganj but had not found anything to confirm that Ashuganj failed because of Bheramara.
“We will submit just a primary report tomorrow. I cannot give you much hope that there would be anything substantial in that report. Before reaching any conclusion, we need to conduct extensive investigation. We need to analyse all the available data for preparing a comprehensive report,” committee member Md Kizir Khan, also a former Power Development Board (PDB) chairman, told the Dhaka Tribune yesterday.
“We have visited several key power plants in Ashuganj and Haripur and have reached a conclusion that there was nothing wrong with them,” committee member Md Shahinul Islam Khan, also a member of PDB who looks after power generation, told the Dhaka Tribune yesterday.
Asked whether they had been able to pinpoint the problematic plant, Shahidul said they need to analyse more data to be able to do that.
“The national grid got unbalanced after the HVDC [Bheramara] sub-station tripped. The officials of the NLDC [National Load Despatch Centre] could not recover from that. We have understood this much,” Mohammad Hossain, director general of the government’s Power Cell and member secretary of the investigation committee, told the Dhaka Tribune yesterday.
Sources said the committee did not get operational data of all the power stations in the country because the system at NLDC was not fully digitised.
Several members of the committee have also said that widespread mismanagement in PGCB was one big reason behind the disaster.
Most PGCB officials and employees have given conflicting statements to the probe committee. Even the PGCB managing director, who is himself a part of the ministry’s probe body, allegedly said one thing in the morning and a complete opposite thing at night.
The PGCB also formed a five-member committee of its own to look into the blackout. But that committee has not yet conducted much investigation.
Tapon Kumar Roy, executive director and chief of the PGCB committee, told the Dhaka Tribune yesterday that they were waiting for the ministry probe body to file its report. He informed that they were going to visit Bheramara tomorrow.
State Minister for Power Nasrul Hamid yesterday said: “In the past, we have seen probe reports vanished. But this time it will not happen. International consultants will be appointed to find out ways to upgrade the national grid.”
Asked why the ministry committee comprised only government officials and no independent experts, Monowar Islam, secretary of the Power Division, said a few days ago that they did not want to waste time.
During a press conference on November 2, he said the disaster was a result of a technical glitch in the western power grid rather than any problem in power transmission from India.
When contacted, Prof Aminul Hoque, who teaches electrical and electronic engineering at Buet, said yesterday: “You do not need three days to find out what went wrong on that day. Just three hours are enough...They did not recruit any independent expert because they wanted to cover up their faults.”
He alleged that the government had been trying to complicate the issue by talking about appointing international consultants. “Buet is fully capable of handling such situations. We have proved that in 2007. The issue of international consultants is just a window dressing. It will only delay things,” he said.
He also said if this went on, the national grid would be heading towards an uncertain and risky future.
