CESC urges judicious use of ACs as heat wave causes strain on network

Kolkata, urban Howrah, and parts of Hooghly serviced by CESC are experiencing an unprecedented surge in electricity demand due to the intense heat wave and a sharp increase in the use of air conditioners. CESC, the city's power utility, recorded a new high of 2,366 MW on Monday, surpassing the previous record of 2,339 MW set on April 28th last year.

While CESC managed to meet the demand, officials have raised concerns about the indiscriminate use of ACs and the sudden addition of loads that were not declared. CESC officials explained that households installed ACs without informing the utility or applying for additional load, leading to overloading of the network. The overload caused tripping of pillar boxes and, in some cases, transformers, when the load surge in a particular area went beyond the capacity of the network.

CESC officials have made an unprecedented appeal to citizens to use ACs judiciously to maintain network stability. "We have a robust network that has a built-in safety mechanism that causes a system to trip in case of overload. We appeal to people to make judicious use of ACs to help us maintain stability in the network and prevent outages," said CESC managing director (distribution) Debasish Banerjee.

The spike in demand for electricity has come after a relatively lower use of air conditioners in March. However, the sudden heatwave led to an increase in the use of ACs, which has put a strain on the network. CESC officials have urged citizens to install ACs after informing the utility and applying for additional load, if required. They have also advised people to set their ACs at a moderate temperature and switch them off when not in use to reduce the load on the network.