Friday’s record will be broken this summer, feel power utilities
Times of India | 28 April 2024
Kolkata: Officials at both WBSEDCL and CESC are in no doubt that Friday evening’s record will be broken again this summer, if not in the next few days, definitely in June when humidity levels of over 90% combines with temperature hovering around 39°C-40°C to turn the city into a sauna. In the past few years, the city has witnessed the higher purchase and usage of AC in June.The current estimate of domestic ACs in the state is around 12 lakh.
While higher electricity consumption was good news for power companies till a few years ago, it is no longer so with the utilities struggling to predict the growth in AC sales and carry out proportional upgrade of their network. On Thursday night, the overload caused the strained infrastructure to snap, tripping power supply twice that plunged the whole of Salt Lake, New Town and parts of north and south Kolkata including Mominpur and Bhela into darkness.
The city has seen multiple outages this summer due to overload causing junction boxes and transformers to trip. There has also been a spike in cable fault due to the excessive heat, both atmospheric and load-related. Some areas have also been plagued by voltage fluctuations, pointing to the strain on the network.
“There is enough power in the grid to meet the demand. The infrastructure — cables, transformers and junction boxes — are functioning at optimum capacity. We are trying to augment capacity so that it can take additional load but that could take two-three months. Till then, we have to manage the load,” said state power minister Aroop Biswas.
Officials at the power utilities said the network was already stretched and could take some additional load but not much more. The tripping that plunged nearly 5 lakh homes into darkness on Thursday has prompted the power department to hasten the augmentation of a critical substation at Subhasgram where power from the grid flows into the state transmission line for distribution in WBSEDCL and CESC areas. But the upgrade of the transformer from 1,000 MVA to 1,500 MVA can start after elections conclude in June and will take at least two months to get completed. “The infrastructure upgrade will happen this year but it will serve to manage the load next summer,” an official said.
Kolkata: Officials at both WBSEDCL and CESC are in no doubt that Friday evening’s record will be broken again this summer, if not in the next few days, definitely in June when humidity levels of over 90% combines with temperature hovering around 39°C-40°C to turn the city into a sauna. In the past few years, the city has witnessed the higher purchase and usage of AC in June. The current estimate of domestic ACs in the state is around 12 lakh.
While higher electricity consumption was good news for power companies till a few years ago, it is no longer so with the utilities struggling to predict the growth in AC sales and carry out proportional upgrade of their network. On Thursday night, the overload caused the strained infrastructure to snap, tripping power supply twice that plunged the whole of Salt Lake, New Town and parts of north and south Kolkata including Mominpur and Bhela into darkness.
The city has seen multiple outages this summer due to overload causing junction boxes and transformers to trip. There has also been a spike in cable fault due to the excessive heat, both atmospheric and load-related. Some areas have also been plagued by voltage fluctuations, pointing to the strain on the network.
“There is enough power in the grid to meet the demand. The infrastructure — cables, transformers and junction boxes — are functioning at optimum capacity. We are trying to augment capacity so that it can take additional load but that could take two-three months. Till then, we have to manage the load,” said state power minister Aroop Biswas.
Officials at the power utilities said the network was already stretched and could take some additional load but not much more. The tripping that plunged nearly 5 lakh homes into darkness on Thursday has prompted the power department to hasten the augmentation of a critical substation at Subhasgram where power from the grid flows into the state transmission line for distribution in WBSEDCL and CESC areas. But the upgrade of the transformer from 1,000 MVA to 1,500 MVA can start after elections conclude in June and will take at least two months to get completed. “The infrastructure upgrade will happen this year but it will serve to manage the load next summer,” an official said.