<div style="text-align: justify; "><span style="font-size: 1rem;">Investigation committee of the state-owned Power Grid Company of Bangladesh (PGCB) has started its probe to identify the reasons behind the national power grid failure that triggered a 7-8 hour long blackout across most of the country, starting at 2:04 pm yesterday (October 4, 2022).</span><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">“We started our probe this morning (Wednesday) to identify the possible causes behind the national grid disaster and also the exact point of the incident,” Eakub Ehalhi Chowdhury, chief of the investigation body and executive director (P&amp;D) of PGCB, told UNB.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">PGCB initially formed a 5-member investigation committee, headed by Eakub Elahi Chowdhury, representatives from Bangladesh Power Development Board (BPDB), Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET) and also from other power sector entities, following the national grid failure.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Later, an experienced individual who had been working as consultant with grid systems locally and internationally, was co-opted in the committee.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Eakub informed that the committee will visit substations and power stations and other relevant facilities to identify the reasons behind the grid-collapse.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Official sources said the investigation committee was given three days’ time to complete the probe.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">“It might take more time to reach a conclusion, as this involves a lot of technical issues of the grid system,” Eakub told UNB.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Meanwhile, State Minister Nasrul Hamid instructed the ministry of power, energy and mineral resources to form two more investigation committees to identify the cause of the grid failure and also gave recommendations to avert any further disaster in future.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Those two committees are yet to be formed, said an official of Power Division.&nbsp;&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: justify;">PGCB and BPDB officials believe that Tuesday's grid disaster started from somewhere in Ashuganj-Sirajganj interconnecting transmission line that led to a colossal shutdown of power plants across the country.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">After a relentless effort of 3 hours, PGCB first became successful in restoring power in Kalyanpur grid sub-station and then restored power supply in the president's official residence of Bangabhaban and Prime Minister’s official residence of Ganabhaban at 5 pm.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Gradually, power supply was restored in other parts of the area and within 10:30 pm, the entire country had electricity.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">PGCB officials said the country’s power supply demand was relatively lower at around 8500 MW on Tuesday as the weather was not hot.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Bangladesh’s biggest incident of national power grid failure happened on November 1 in 2014 when the entire country was without power for 17 hours.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify; ">bnbd24/kh</div>