State power minister Aroop Biswas called the CESC brass for a meeting on Tuesday in the wake of rising anger at the utility’s alleged inability to deal with frequent power cuts across areas it serves.
The minister asked CESC officials to arrange for “high-end generator sets” to provide relief to consumers till normal supply to the affected area is restored.
“We asked the CESC officials to immediately arrange high-end generator sets that can be used as a stop-gap measure in at least some of the places where these problems (power outages) are reported,” Biswas told The Telegraph.
“We have received reports of power outages from several parts of the city. Transformers are getting damaged mostly because of the overuse of electrical appliances, resulting in consumption of electricity beyond the sanctioned load. There is no shortage of power,” the minister said.
This newspaper reported on Tuesday that CESC had used a generator to supply power to an outage-hit locality behind Quest Mall after residents flocked into the air-conditioned mall past 11pm on Sunday complaining of a prolonged power cut.
CESC sources said use of generators as a temporary solution while engineers repair a damaged transformer has been limited.
Asked about CESC’s preparedness to use generator sets in places without power, executive director of the utility, Avijit Ghosh, said: “We have adequate generators.... Those are only used in extreme exigencies.”
Minister Biswas said he had also asked CESC to increase personnel and ensure 24X7 service to provide relief to the people at the earliest.
CESC managing director (distributions) Debasish Banerjee said Tuesday’s peak demand, recorded at 3.30pm, was 2,503MW, the highest ever recorded. It was 137MW more than Monday’s peak demand.
Asked if CESC was trying to identify the areas where power consumption is more than the sanctioned load, Banerjee said it was not possible to zero in on the violators and that the company had no intention to disconnect supply to them. “We can only appeal to people to consume electricity within the sanctioned load,” he said.
At least three private hospitals said they had experienced power outages several times in the last two or three nights. An official of one of the hospitals, along EM Bypass, said they faced power trips thrice early on Tuesday. “Each time, it was for a few minutes,” the official said.
Another hospital said they had a 15-minute outage a couple of days back. The official said: “We have backups so patients were not inconvenienced. Usually, CESC informs us before such shutdowns. But there was no such intimation this time.”
A third hospital said CESC had informed them before a power outage early on Tuesday.
Sources in the power department said there were reports of prolonged power cuts across the city even on Tuesday. Among the affected pockets were Jodhpur Park, Haridevpur, Beleghata, Belgharia and Dakshineswar. The inconvenience triggered unrest in multiple places.
Apprehending violence, the police have posted pickets at the Taratala and Narkeldanga distribution centres of CESC.
