Kolkatans to brook another day of heat & humidity

Santanu Saraswati
Kolkata, April 26--Kolkatans have to bear the heat wave condition for another day. On Sunday, the maximum temperature was 40.6 °C — four degrees above normal. And to add to the woes, power cuts continued in some parts of the city and its outskirts like Kasba and Garia. The maximum relative humidity on Sunday was 92 with the minimum being 16.
Met officials confirmed that on Monday there would not be much change in the mercury level and the temperature would be around 40 °C. So, Kolkatans have no scope of relief from the heat wave.
A senior Met official, said: “We have issued a warning for a heat wave for the next 24 hours. We are keeping a watch on current weather conditions. Then we will decide if we need to extend the warning.” He predicted that hot and uncomfortable weather would prevail for some days.
Increasing mercury level is making life miserable for the people in the city, as people were seen struggling to tackle the heat wave, with no rain cloud on the horizon. The primary reasons for this discomfort and high temperature is lack of sufficient moisture.
Met official said hot dry winds from Bihar and Jharkhand are continuing to come to the city. As a result, the mercury level is refusing to go down and there is no sign of rain clouds on the horizon.
Except for a few areas like Kasba and Garia, there were no reports of power cuts in CESC area, though the power utility claimed that there was loadshedding only for industrial consumers.
The worst sufferers were the districts in north Bengal, where consumers reported to undergo loadshedding for five hours. CESC report said it has a shortfall of 40-mega watts for industrial consumers while state board had a shortfall of 350-mega watts on Sunday.
Though the state power department is claiming it to be an abnormal rise in demand for electricity, compared to last year, CESC authorities are blaming it on irresponsible use of air-conditioning machines by domestic consumers. The demand for electricity in the state is 4700-mega watts, while it’s 1510-mega watts in CESC areas.
Shortage of fossil fuels from the coal supplying agencies has caused a considerable fall in total generation. Sagardighi and Durgapur Projects Limited (DPL)’s unit VII suffer frequent breakdowns, as the Chinese technology is yet to settle in. And nobody knows when CESC’s third unit at Budge Budge would start commercial generation.
“The state generation units are presently generating almost 600-mega watts less than normal summer day-generation in last year. DPL is generating only 80-mega watts, 400-mega watts less than its normal generation capacity. And two major units at Farakka are lying dysfunctional. When CESC was told to build up an ultra mega thermal power plant at Balagarh in Burdwan district in late 80s, the private power utility declined thinking of lower profit earning. Now, they are having only 870-mega watt to meet up 1510-mega watts of demand for electricity,” CITU secretary and president of Electricity Employees Federation of India (EFI) and the SEB Employees Union (SEBEU), Prasanta Nandi Chowdhury, told HT, on Sunday.
“It took years to get permission for setting up our second and third units at Budge Budge as we have to buy 400 to 500-mega watts of electricity daily. Electricity can’t be stored. What will we do with the rest of our generated electricity?” a CESC official said.
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