Residents of New Town and Salt Lake suffered frequent power cuts on Sunday night, which forced many of them to step out and spend the gruelling hours in parks and other open spaces, and again on Monday afternoon.
Many residents of New Town’s CE Block told The Telegraph on Monday that they had been without power for close to six-and-a-half hours on Sunday night.
On Monday afternoon, too, there were intermittent power outages ranging from 30 minutes to around an hour.
CE Block, in New Town’s Action Area I, is primarily a residential area with a number of shopping malls and hotels in the vicinity.
Residents said they had frantically called up the helpline numbers of the West Bengal State Electricity Distribution Company Limited (WBSEDCL), which supplies power to Salt Lake and New Town, but the utility hardly provided any help.
Sayan Ghosh, who lives in an apartment in CE Block, said the block had been witnessing frequent power cuts, but the one on Sunday night was of the longest duration.
“We were without electicity from around 9pm till 2am on Sunday. Initially, we tried staying indoors as the rooms had been cooled down by air-conditioners, but soon the heat became so unbearable that we had to go out to the balcony. Then we headed to a park nearby,” said Ghosh, who works in Sector V.
Sumit Choudhury, 72, a retired state government employee, said he suffers from respiratory disorders and other ailments and has been advised by doctors to stay in regulated temperatures throughout the day and night.
“Our building doesn’t have a diesel generator. After Sunday’s power cut, we called an emergency meeting and will install one by the end of this week. We spent most of last night on the balcony, though that hardly provided any relief,” Choudhury said.
In Salt Lake, too, residents of IA, EE and ED Blocks complained of power cuts on Sunday.
Prerona Bhattacharya, a resident of ED Block, said they suffered multiple power cuts on Sunday and Monday. “The longest spell lasted around an hour and a half,” she said.
When asked about the power cuts and the increase in frequency, a spokesperson for WBSEDCL said transformers in New Town and Salt Lake are getting overloaded and failing as people are installing ACs of various capacities, refrigerators and other cooling gadgets in large numbers because of the ongoing heat spell.
“In the sauna-like conditions prevailing in the city, many are installing additional ACs and refrigerators. But contrary to the norm, they are not letting us know that the sanctioned power load of their homes needs to be increased. That is leading to overloading of transformers, causing them to fail,” the spokesperson said.
Homes with multiple ACs and other gadgets should opt for a three-phase meter, which allow residents to use the gadgets simultaneously.
This meter or load augmentation is done at the house-unit level for a fee and depending on the need, the transformers catering to a locality are upgraded.
“We have observed an increase in undeclared load across Salt Lake and New Town. However, as soon as the faults were reported, we had sent out teams to repair the transformers. It took time as the repairs that had to be carried out were extensive,” the spokesperson said.