This happened on a weekend holiday with chilly weather, when normally the demand for electricity remains at a lower level as most industrial units and public-private offices are closed and domestic consumers do not run their electric home appliances like fans and air-conditioners.

Officials at Bangladesh Power Development Board (BPDB) said this could be a good indication for anybody else to guess the situation during the coming summer when the country's electricity demand will cross the 5000MW benchmark.

They said there might be a shortage of about 2000MW plus load-shedding during the peak-demand period in the months of the coming summer between May and October, when normally heat wave hits the country.

According to BPDB official website, more than 25 small and large generation units, out of 70, at different power stations remained out of operation either for rehabilitation or maintenance or for gas shortage.

Of those, the authorities had to shut down a number of units due to short supply of gas.

"That's why we are producing a maximum of 2900MW against a reliable capacity of about 4200MW," a BPDB official told UNB.

Last week, BPDB Chairman ANM Rizwan hoped that the generation situation would improve in the coming summer when most of these closed units will resume operation on completion of their maintenance and rehabilitation.

But industry-insiders say the power board "could never have a good situation in the summer than that in winter as a huge number of plants face troubles in hot weather."

Meanwhile, after a long wait, the much-talked-about 80MW Tongi power plant has successfully completed its test run running nonstop for 36 hours that ended at 6:00pm yesterday.

Manager of Tongi plant Abul Mazid told UNB that after a long pursuit for last couple of days the plant has been getting gas supply for a certain period in the off-peak hours.

He said in conducting the test-run, the plant was able to take its ever-highest load and generated 115 megawatts against its normal production capacity of 105MW.

"At one stage of testing peak-load, we found the machine even producing 121MW for some hours," he added.

He said the Chinese contractor, Harbin Power Engineering (HPE), is scheduled to hand over the plant to BPDB in August if it continues to run in good condition.