Bangladesh’s power grid got some much-needed relief this week after Adani Power’s Godda plant in India’s Jharkhand state brought its second generating unit back online, ending an outage that had pushed the country’s electricity shortfall past 3,000 megawatts (MW) at its worst point.
What Went Wrong
Unit-2 of the 1,600MW Godda Thermal Power Plant tripped offline around midnight on Thursday after a fault developed in its boiler feed pump, a key part of the plant’s main water supply system. The pump keeps high-pressure water flowing into the steam boiler, so any malfunction forces an automatic shutdown as a safety measure. Before the failure, the plant had actually been ramping up output and was supplying around 1,430MW to Bangladesh, its highest level in weeks. The trip cut that supply to below 800MW almost overnight.
The timing made things worse. The shutdown came right after the plant had been struggling with reduced generation due to severe congestion on the railway network, which disrupted coal deliveries to Godda. Adani Power had already been forced to optimise output and prioritise supply during evening peak hours because of the coal transport issues, so losing an entire unit on top of that squeezed Bangladesh’s grid hard.
Getting Back Online
Engineers worked through the outage, and Adani Power said Unit-2 was successfully lit up at 5:17 am on Sunday, ahead of its own internal schedule. The unit was formally synchronised with Bangladesh’s national grid at 12:04 pm the same day, according to Mohammad Jahurul Islam, a member of the Bangladesh Power Development Board (BPDB). That brought the outage to a close after roughly 84 hours.
Officials were careful to note that synchronisation is only the first step. Md Nahid Hasan of Power Grid Bangladesh said it would take time for the unit to reach full production, and early readings backed that up. At 9 am on the day of restart, supply from Adani was still only around 758MW. But the ramp-up moved quickly. By 2 pm, Unit-1 was supplying 756MW, and Unit-2 had already climbed to 290MW, and by 6 pm total supply from the plant had reached around 1,450MW, effectively restoring both units to near full capacity.
Why This Matters for Bangladesh
Bangladesh imports power from Godda under a 25-year power purchase agreement signed in 2017, under which it is entitled to draw up to 1,600MW from the plant. That makes Godda one of the largest single sources of imported electricity for the country, alongside roughly 2,600MW brought in from other parts of India and a smaller 40MW from Nepal.
When Unit-2 went down, it landed at a moment when the BPDB was already producing between 13,000MW and 14,000MW against a demand of 16,000MW to 17,000MW, a gap that was only made worse by ongoing shortages of gas, coal, and liquid fuel domestically. The loss of Godda’s supply pushed the shortfall to more than 3,000MW at its peak on Thursday night, triggering heavier load shedding across the country.
With both units now back in service, officials expect the extra capacity to ease pressure on the grid and cut back on the rolling outages that had been affecting households and industry alike.
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A Recurring Headache
This is not the first time Godda has caused problems for Bangladesh’s power supply. The plant has seen a string of disruptions in recent months, from coal transport bottlenecks slowing generation to earlier shutdowns triggered by technical glitches at both units. A similar episode saw both units knocked out around the same time, forcing Bangladesh into some of its worst load shedding in recent memory.
For now, the restoration of Unit-2 offers breathing room. But given how often Godda’s supply has wavered this year, energy officials in Dhaka will likely be watching the plant’s performance closely in the weeks ahead, especially with coal logistics still an unresolved issue on the Indian side.
