Introduction:
Power plays a great role wherever people lives and works in industry, agriculture, and transportation etc. The living standard and prosperity of a nation vary directly with increase in use of power. As technology is advancing the consumption of power is steadily rising. Sufficient and reliable source of electricity is a major prerequisite for a sustained and successful economic development effort and poverty reduction. In Bangladesh, 90 million of the populations out of 140 million do not have direct access to electricity and remaining 50 million people have access but reliable and quality power is still beyond their reach (BPDB, 2007). In order to achieve the growth rate, availability of a reasonably priced and reliable source of electricity is a prerequisite. Present generation of electric power in Bangladesh is not sufficient to meet the consumers growing demand. So it is not possible to ensure a constant supply of electric power to all consumers throughout the country. Moreover the demand is increasing day by day. So it is essential to set up more generating station for over demanding load.
Present Scenario And Causes:
At present, 53% of the total electricity generation of Bangladesh is from the power plants under public sector and 47% of the net generation of the country is from private sector. Even though many extra units both from public and private sector have been added to the national grid, the power crisis is still a big issue in the country. In public sector, most of our power stations of the country have become very old and they are operating lower than their rated capacity with derated machineries. The demand of electricity cannot not be met due to this insufficient production of electricity around the country and as most of our power stations depend primarily on natural gas as fuel, because of the shortage of gas supply some power plants are unable to produce power of their rated generation capacity.