Many parts of Bangladesh recently suffered through power blackouts. We take electricity for granted to power our homes, businesses, and way of life, and these disruptions have taken its toll.
Experts in the country -- led by the Power Grid Company of Bangladesh and the Bangladesh Power Development Board -- are conducting a thorough, root-cause analysis to prevent future outages. In the meantime, many Bangladeshis are left with lots of questions that will have to be answered by experts.
Power outages affect millions of people every year in both developed and developing countries. According to a recent study by IHS Markit, at least 350 million people -- or more than 4% of the global population -- were impacted by major power outages from mid-2020 through 2021.
However, it’s important to note that most of these power outages were caused either by extreme weather--such as the United States’ recent hurricane in Florida and the Texas winter storm in 2021--or inadequate generation to support the electrical load, happening now in South Africa with temporary electrical interruption and recently in Bangladesh through controlled load shedding.
By contrast, a blackout is when the entire grid fails because of a localized disturbance, impacting broader areas.
Blackouts are much less common, even though they happen in both developed countries (in Northeast, USA in 2003) and developing countries. Among some of the more damaging blackouts in Bangladesh and nearby countries in recent memory:
● In July 2012, two large-scale blackouts occurred in India, leaving more than 600 million people--or 9% of the world’s population--in the dark and becoming the largest power outage in history. It even topped the January 2021 blackout in Northern India, which affected 230 million people and was caused due to faults in the transmission system. The 2012 blackout was caused by the failure of three grids serving India’s Northern, Eastern, and Northeast regions of the country.
● In November 2014, most of our country’s population of more than 160 million were without electricity for 10 straight hours. All the power plants were forced to shut down as the national grid lost about 445 megawatts of power when an uncontrolled chain reaction set in.
● In August 2019, a blackout occurred in the Indonesian island of Java, affecting more than 120 million people. The problem was traced to the failure of a gas turbine at a major power plant and a disruption at another power facility. The island suffered a similar blackout in 2005.
● In January 2021, a massive blackout in Pakistan affected 90% of the country’s population.
Power systems are the lifeblood of our daily lives. When there’s a blackout, we know all too well the unintended damage it can cause. But having a greater understanding of why the blackout happened and what remedial measures will be taken will hopefully yield a more informed society as we collectively work together towards a more reliable power grid.
The following questions are designed to trigger a discussion among both the power systems experts who are conducting the root cause analysis, and the public who need assurance that the lessons learned will inform better operation of the power grid and minimize chances of future blackouts.
Top 10 questions
1. Was the blackout triggered by a grid outage, generation outage, or insufficient generation to meet load?
2. If the blackout was triggered by a grid outage resulting in a cascading set of events, what grid components led to the outage and what caused their initial failure?
3. If the blackout was triggered by a generation outage, what was the cause and how much megawatt of generation was lost?
4. A well-designed grid should be able to survive credible potential outages of major grid components or generators. Was the cause of the outage beyond that design basis and if so, why?
5. What were the expected and unexpected actions that caused the event to cascade beyond a local issue and result in a large-scale blackout?
6. A grid is designed to shed load through well-coordinated relay operation to avoid a catastrophic blackout. If this protection did not work properly, what was the root cause?
7. Was electrical service restored to critical loads and the broader customer base within expected timelines? If not, was the delayed restoration due to insufficient black start capability (the ability to restart isolated power stations and gradually reconnect to one another to form an interconnected system again), or with the processes used to restore the grid?
8. Was there any deficiency in coordinated actions among the national grid,transmission and distribution companies, generating stations, and broader stakeholders such as local and national government, telecom companies? Were customers well-informed on restoration progress and expected restoration times?
9. It is important for grid operators to know what is happening as events unfold. Did grid operators have situational awareness at all times of what was happening on the grid during the event and have adequate communication capabilities during the blackout and subsequent restoration?
10. What are the lessons learned from this blackout and what preventive actions will be taken to avert a similar event in the future?
It will take time to conduct the root cause analysis. Patience will be a virtue for all of us who are eagerly waiting to learn what happened and why. More importantly though, we’re waiting to hear what steps will be taken to reassure the public that the risk of future blackouts is minimized.
Answers to these questions will go a long way to reassure the general Bangladeshi population who have suffered from these blackouts.
Dr Arshad Mansoor is President & CEO , EPRI. Founded in 1972, EPRI is the world’s preeminent independent, non-profit research organizations with offices around the world, working with more than 450 energy companies in 45 countries to shape the future of a clean, affordable, and resilient energy system.
