Heatwave: State govt gears up to meet demand of electricity

Kolkata: State Power minister Aroop Biswas on Friday held an emergency meeting with the top CESC officials and his department’s officials giving instructions as to what steps ought to be taken to meet a sudden demand of power following the heatwave situation in the city.

The minister has directed the CESC officials to ensure uninterrupted power supply when people are parched with heat. The minister also said that if there is any technical glitch in any areas, the CESC has to inform the customers through SMS. Even if there is a technical glitch resulting in power cut in some areas, high power generators should be used to provide backup supply.

The CESC has also been instructed to increase the number of mobile repairing vans and the manpower as well. The meeting was held at Vidyut Unnayan Bhawan. Power secretary Santanu Basu and the WBPDCL Chairman PB Selim were present in the meeting.

The city saw a power demand at 2,294 MW on Tuesday afternoon. This is over 100 MW higher than the maximum demand of 2,180 MW recorded up to April 15

last year. The maximum night time demand so far this year has been 2,101 MW. As the temperature continued to soar, CESC appealed to consumers to inform the utility of the additional load to prevent a repeat of last year. A sudden spurt in unsanctioned load due to installation of a large number of air-conditioners triggered frequent power outages last year. The CESC as of last Tuesday received 15,683 applications in the past month, 40 per cent higher than 11,050 applications it had received in the corresponding period last year.According to a source, as the temperature since the past few days has been hovering around 40 degree Celsius, use of air conditioners in the households has increased which led to an increase in consumption of electricity.

Various shop owners claim sales of air conditioners in the past few months have gone

up reasonably.