The return of an Adani Power unit brought 800MW of electricity back to Bangladesh’s grid on Sunday, but the relief was short-lived as a 660MW unit of the Rampal Thermal Power Plant shut down due to a technical fault, adding fresh pressure to a power system already struggling with a major generation shortfall.
Adani Power’s 800MW Godda Unit-2 resumed supply after a three-day shutdown, while Rampal Unit-2 in Bagerhat stopped generation around 11am on the same day.
The simultaneous developments left the country’s power system with little improvement despite the restoration of Adani supply.
Adani Power said its Godda Unit-2 was successfully lit up at 5:17am Bangladesh Standard Time and synchronised with Bangladesh’s national grid at 12:04pm.
The unit had remained offline since 9 September due to a technical problem, reducing Adani’s supply to Bangladesh to below 800MW from around 1,430MW.
However, as the Adani unit returned to operation, Rampal’s second unit stopped generation due to a technical fault.
Anwarul Azim, general manager of Rampal’s human resources department, confirmed the shutdown and said repair work was underway.
He said that the unit could take three to four days to resume operation but could not specify the nature of the fault.
The first unit of Rampal, which has a capacity of 660MW, continued supplying electricity to the national grid.
The latest outage comes as Bangladesh’s power sector faces persistent shortages caused by fuel supply constraints and technical problems at several plants.
According to Power Grid Company of Bangladesh (PGCB) data available until 5pm on Sunday, load shedding remained between 1,400MW and 2,800MW for most of the day.
During peak demand periods, total electricity generation has remained around 13,000MW to 14,000MW against demand of roughly 16,000MW to 17,000MW.
The return of Godda Unit-2 was expected to ease pressure on the grid by restoring a significant amount of imported power. However, the shutdown of Rampal Unit-2 removed 660MW of domestic generation capacity, limiting the immediate benefit.
Adani’s Godda power plant had also been operating below full capacity for several weeks due to disruptions in coal transportation in India.
The Indian company earlier said railway congestion, loading restrictions and heavy rainfall had affected coal movement, reducing generation from the plant.
The Godda power plant has a total generation capacity of 1,600MW and supplies all of its electricity to Bangladesh.
Before Unit-2 went offline, the plant was supplying around 1,430MW to Bangladesh’s grid.
The latest developments highlight the vulnerability of Bangladesh’s power system, where the return of one major source can be quickly offset by unexpected failures elsewhere.
