Bangladesh faces power blackout after grid fails

Dhaka: A failure in Bangladesh's national power grid plunged much of the country into a blackout on Tuesday, officials said.

Officials of the state-run Bangladesh Power Development Board said that power transmission failed somewhere in the eastern part of the country.

All power plants tripped and electricity was cut in the capital, Dhaka, and other big cities, said Shameem Hasan, a power department spokesman.

Engineers were trying to determine where and why the glitches happened and it could take hours to restore the system, he said.

Bangladesh's recent impressive economic growth has been threatened by power shortages since the government suspended operations of all diesel-run power plants to reduce costs for imports as prices have soared. The diesel-run power plants produced about 6% of Bangladesh's power generation, so their shutdowns cut output by up to 1,500 megawatts.