Summary
Supply restored on Day 5; gearbox malfunction cited
Four generators continued to whirr on the Jadavpur University campus on Thursday as the arts and science wings of the university remained without power through the day. The outage, which started on Saturday, ended around 6.30pm.
The lights and fans in the rooms where students of the two faculties wrote their semester exams on Thursday afternoon were powered by the four generators. They did so on Monday, too.
CESC had sent two of the generators and the university had hired two.
Laboratories remained shut, leaving teachers worried about the fate of the instruments, which they feared might get damaged because of the prolonged power cut.
The university closed at 2pm on Thursday on the occasion of Jamai Sashthi and the labs will reopen on Friday.
“We can assess the impact on instruments only after the labs reopen," a teacher in the chemistry department said.
The teachers did not operate the lab equipment because the generators might not have been able to cope with the increased load.
Air-conditioners were not operated either.
Elevators were not used and teachers and students climbed stairs to reach rooms in the undergraduate arts buildings where the exams were held.
Vice-chancellor Suranjan Das went to the building in the afternoon to check whether the exams were going on smoothly.
Asked why it took so long for the power to be restored, Das told The Telegraph: “We restored the service with the help of CESC engineers. A major fault happened in our power distribution network. Time was needed to get the spare parts.”
He said he had requested the head of the university’s electrical engineering department to investigate the fault and suggest ways to prevent it.
“If any major overhauling is required, we will request the government to help us with funds,” he said.
A professor of the electrical engineering department said the outage happened because a gearbox failed to receive the required 11KV of power.
“Power from CESC is received through a gearbox before it is distributed. A flash burn, which is a kind of malfunction, happened in the gearbox. Supply was restored on Thursday evening. But a major overhaul of the network is needed," he said.
Last updated on 26 May 2023
