3. November 1st, 2014 Bangladesh Blackout – 150 million affected
The Bangladesh blackout in November left the entire country without power for 10 hours. At 11:30 am a sub-station in Bheramara, located in the Kushtia district went offline. This caused a disruption in the 400 KV transmission line that was carrying 445 MW of power to Bangladesh from India. With such a substantial loss of power every power plant in the country had to shut down.
Most of the industries in Bangladesh were shut down while a few like hospitals, airports, and other important buildings were able to maintain power through the use of generators. There was a large demand for gas to power the generators and cars were no longer able to get CNG which further increased the need for gas. By sunset, most of the streets were bare as businesses closed. Price gouging on kerosene and candles occurred as no one was sure how long the power would be offline. There was no internet or mobile phone services, television and newspaper media were not able to get information to the people.
That afternoon some of the electricity had been restored but by 4:30 the power plants that had been brought back online tripped again. By 9:00 power started to be restored to some areas and by midnight, power was restored everywhere. Blackouts are not uncommon in Bangladesh and that is why many people in the country keep diesel generators on hand. Many believe that the outages have to do with poor infrastructure and maintenance of the power grid, which could be responsible for the trip that occurred on November 1st.
What is perhaps most surprising about the blackouts in Bangladesh is that a third of the population still has no access to electricity and the country has one of the lowest per capita electricity consumption rates in the world. If Bangladesh is going to continue to develop and increase GDP it will need to upgrade its power system.