The BBC is reporting that basically the entire country of Bangladesh is without power, a country of 150 million people.

The emergency seems related to the failure of a high voltage transmission line from the Indian electric grid, but it seems that the exact cause or reason why the blackout continues is unclear so I guess it will take some time to figure that out. In the meanwhile, Bangladesh's power plants appear unable to continue generating power.

One recurring disaster theme I've heard for a number of years now is a widespread grid down situation due to a number of different reasons (e.g. cyberattack, EMP, solar flare, lack of maintenance, etc). National Geographic's program American Blackout (which I didn't see) is probably the latest high profile reminder.

In Bangladesh's case, it does not sound like major permanent damage has been done to generating or transmission capability, so hopefully they're up and running again soon. I just saw a TV segment on the blackout and the longer it continues, the more authorities worry about the security situation in the capital.

Prompted by this incident, I watched the whole NatGeo American Blackout program. Not bad. Of course, no one knows with any certainty how a future calamity unfolds, but I guess it gives you a taste of some of the possibilities.

The problem is not only with the power going down but starting up again. Have a look around for "black start"

This will get you going:
Wiki "black start"

P.S. Didcot 'A' is now decommissioned and Didcot 'B' had a disastrous fire last week and lost at least half of its capacity and its black start.

I understand there are only three Black Start power stations in the UK to kick off the whole grid. It is not a trivial exercise.

Sounds like most of the grid has been restored, with the rest hopefully restored soon.

What I hadn't realized is that many commercial/industrial sites there already have their own generating capacity because the grid supply can be inconsistent even during normal times. Still, water distribution sounds like it was disrupted in most cases and that could become a problem quickly, particularly in urban situations.

Thereby lies an irony.

"unreliability" of the central source seems to tend organizations to plan and spend money on "back-ups," thus mitigating the adverse effects of an outage of the central source. This tends to increase the "robustness" (resistance to problems/outages) of the overall system.

Or, as our Grandparents used to say, "don't put all your eggs in one basket."

One of the other Black Start Power stations in the UK is based at Cruachan built within the mountain.



A black start can be a major problem trying to re-establish the Electricity Grid

Spent a couple of days with no electric -- Its interesting. For one it is very dark at night...and things like septic pumps? Electric.