What happened

A power-transmission failure in the eastern part of Bangladesh's grid around 2:00pm local time on 4 October 2022 caused all power plants nationwide to trip offline, blacking out an estimated 75-80% of the country and affecting a population of roughly 168 million people, including the capital Dhaka. The outage occurred amid an ongoing national power crisis: the government had already suspended operation of diesel-fired plants — about 6% of generation capacity, roughly 1,500 megawatts — to reduce fuel-import costs as global energy prices rose, leaving less spare capacity to absorb the transmission fault. Bangladesh Power Development Board official Shameem Hasan said authorities were working to gradually restore supply and that an investigation into the cause of the grid collapse was underway; by nightfall, power had been restored to about 45% of the affected regions, with full restoration timing still unclear at the time of reporting. This was an accidental grid/transmission failure occurring against a backdrop of energy-supply strain, not an attack.

When cited sources give different casualty, damage or spill figures for this event, they’re reported side by side above rather than merged into one number. See how confidence levels work.