Heat is on, power is off

Santanu Saraswati
Kolkata, April 24--There seems to be no comfort anywhere. If outside the sun is blazing, severe power crisis inside has left no respite for Kolkatans. And a breather is at least 48 hours away, with no rainfall in sight, says Met officials.
If Friday’s dry spell brought in some relief in the form of less sweating, discomfort is likely to increase as humidity levels will go up once again. While maximum temperature touched 40.6 degrees Celsius on Friday, the weather would continue to be extremely sunny and humid over the next 48 hours, with no possibilities of rain at all for the next few days. “There will be no interval from the heat wave for the next 48 hours. The main reason for this discomfort and high temperature is lack of sufficient moisture in the atmosphere,” said G.C. Debnath, director of the Regional Meteorological Centre at Alipore. With mercury levels on the rise maximum temperature on Saturday is likely to be around 42 degrees Celsius.
While the heat and the humidity took its toll on denizens, the city continued to reel under acute power crisis for the sixth consecutive day with no assurance from power utilities that things would improvement. No word of hope was also forthcoming regarding the generation units, which have been lying dysfunctional since Sunday, being restored.
While demand for power in CESC area stands around 1490 Mega Watts, at least 100 MW more than last year’s summer, the private power utility service blamed this on heavy sell of air-conditioners in the city this year. Santanu Chatterjee, CESC executive director (loss control & prevention), told Hindustan Times that apprehending power cuts late in the night, most people were keeping their air-conditioners on since evening, even when they were not at home. “This has lead to an added rise in power by 100 MW the city and surrounding areas. We’re fighting against all odds to keep our supply on round the clock. What we need is little cooperation from our consumers,” he said.
According to Chatterjee, sell of ACs have seen a 27 per cent rise, which has put additional load on CESC supply system. “During the dark days of 1970s, when power crisis was acute, an act prohibited switching on ACs during peak hours, violating which was a punishable offence. This law doesn’t exist any more and we can’t even come up with advertisements requesting consumers to control their habit,” he said.
The shortfall reduced down to 125 MW in CESC area, after the power utility imported few mega watts from Phillips Carbon Black Limited, a RPG Group company based out of Durgapur. This measure too, however, failed to import 60 Mw from another group company, Asansol’s Crescent Power. “Their engineers are trying their best to restore generation. We are expecting to import electricity from Saturday,” the CESC spokesperson said.
While almost every area under CESC went through power cuts varying from two to three hours, areas like Beliaghata Main Road, Ruby Park in Kasba and few parts of Behala and Garia suffered most. Residents of Beliaghata and Garia have to suffer the ordeal for more than five hours even during the off-peak period.
Shortfall in the state board area was 550-mega watts. The board however, failed to get its share of pie from the central sector even on Friday as National Thermal Power Corporation’s (NTPC) both the units in Farakka are still lying non-functional because of shortage of water. WBPDCL’s unit at Bandel, which resumed generation on Thursday night, again shut down in the morning leaving the district going through power cuts varying from 10 to 12 hours on Friday.
The state board imported 300-mega watts of electricity from the Rajasthan State Electricity Board (RSEB) in exchange of power to be exported on Saturday morning. “We are hopeful of seeing better days soon, at least there will be no problem of getting our required coal supply from the Coal India Limited. We are holding talks with the CIL authority to solve this problem, but there is no assurance from the central sector yet,” an official with the WBPDCL said.

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