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The lights are going out

FARID BAKHT
SHoPPERS were relieved to see that the lights in their favourite shopping centres still shone brightly, the day after the authorities came up with their latest clever idea. However, shopkeepers are under pressure to cut back on the air-conditioning and lighting so that that critical commodity, electricity, can be supplied elsewhere.
one might wonder how long it is before the lights go out on a system where basic services are failing regularly. Appearances are being kept up for the diplomatic enclaves. Not until the last moment do they have to suffer the sound of diesel generators kicking in instantaneously whenever the local electricity "supplier" decides their time is up. But they are not so easily fooled. They read the papers. To underscore the permanence of failure, words such as "load-shedding" have become part of the daily language. Type it in your PC, and your friendly software will underline it, assuming you have made a spelling mistake. But the citizens of this metropolis know what it means: misery, mosquitoes, heat, lack of water and frustration.
Is it that difficult? You might even wonder how is that we have a shortage of electricity? Despite all the controversy about how much gas we have or do not have, no one doubts we have sufficient to produce a puny 4,000 MW of electricity. in fact, we need only 1,000 MW extra to meet our shortfall, for now.
Why has there been next to no, or at best negligible, addition to our power-generating capacity over the last few years? A favourite reason for cancelling projects is because they are financed by
suppliers' credit. Has anyone compared the loss to economic growth of power shortages against the cost of repaying the loans?
Beyond aid, we could choose to import micro-generators of 1MW to mega-sized 100MW turbines ourselves. Why don't we? Is it because we lack imagination?
Insoluble? The big foreign electricity producers naturally require foreign currency in payment. They are not going to be fobbed off with a currency that is following the US dollar in a descent
with no end. We have barely three months worth of the stuff for imports. So that's a non-starter. We can't pay. Have we asked why we need those companies at all? Enron has come and gone. AES went belly up too. The rest look anaemic.
Many people are unaware that Bangladeshi companies can set up as energy providers using off-the-shelf foreign technology and produce electricity. The government has a policy in place. The Rural Electricity Board (REB) buys electricity at competitive prices in local currency (Taka) from small 10MW generator companies. The technology (generators) is imported and is robust.
How does it work? Titas Gas pipes in the gas, the generator converts that into electricity, which then gets fed into the grid. Each plant only requires a handful of engineers and we have enough of them. Decentralised power generation is a real alternative and we have the most important inputs to the process in place, namely gas and trained people. We could have a score of such establishments dotted around the capital (or better, industrial zones). They could be in place in months if we
had the will. We don't.
Tender-bajis : Private and
public entities have numerous proposals in place but the Byzantine labyrinth that describes the "Tender Process" means that decisions do not get made. The tenders initiated in previous regime are discarded. New unsolicited proposals are approved and then discontinued. People are busy shuffling paper, positioning for a percentage. Keep an eye out for a sudden flurry of approvals over the next twelve months, which then stand a great chance of being cancelled in the future.
We demand some management: The authorities do not seem in a rush to increase supply and would rather play around with
demand. Sensibly done, this is termed "Demand-Side Management". Unfortunately, the authorities think this means punishing consumers by denying electricity for hours on end. We know that if only compact fluorescent lamps (CFL) were used widely, we could shave 300MW off the demand in Dhaka alone! Many electricity suppliers throughout the world have found it cheaper to dish out CFL bulbs for free, rather than build new power stations.
Why can DESA/DESCo not destroy the old inefficient bulbs and replace them free of charge with equivalent CFL bulbs? Start with the government offices, to set an example. Then mobilise a few thousand special distributors and go to houses, factories, offices and shopping centres. or set up an exchange scheme in several centres. Financially, it would make sense to the bottomline of both consumer and producer. on top, slab punitive import duties on old-style fridges and electrical equipment, while simultaneously making it dutyfree to import the latest energyconserving models of fridges, TVs, ACs etc. Some agents will protest, but retailers and consumers will benefit.
We could moan about theft or "systems loss". The good news is that some honest officials have run pilot projects and dramatically reduced systems loss in three districts, within the present set-up. The bad news is that this good work was not copied nationally. We now need a few democratically elected people to stand up and make some tough decisions and stop making excuses.
Farid Bakht is part of the Futurebangla Network, a "Think-and-do-Tank".
***We know that if only compact fluorescent lamps (CFL)
were used widely, we could shave 300MW off the demand in Dhaka alone! Many electricity suppliers throughout the world have found it cheaper to dish out CFL bulbs for free, rather than build new power stations. Why can DESA/DESCO not destroy the old inefficient bulbs and replace them free of charge with equivalent CFL bulbs? Start with the government offices, to set an example.**