West Bengal Minister meets with officials over frequent power outage in Kolkata

Kolkata, 10th June 2023: West Bengal Power Minister Aroop Biswas met with CESC officials on Friday and voiced concerns about spike in power outages in Kolkata.

According to officials, he urged CESC to investigate the increasing power outages and ensure a consistent supply in the city.

According to a CESC spokesman, the power outages were caused by overloading induced by the indiscriminate installation of air conditioners without authorization.

The company added that in the past three months, CESC had received applications for the installation of only 45,000 new ACs, but an estimated 1.5 lakh ACs were installed in the city. Two-thirds of the people installed ACs without obtaining permission, leading to an overload at the transformer level and the power getting tripped to protect the system from further damage.

Nearly 5,000 personnel was addressing the faults, and the disruption happened in only seven-eight of the 8,700 transformers. The authorities added that the CESC is now looking to issue notices to consumers who exceed their permitted power capacity.

This comes as the city of Kolkata has faced increasing power cuts over the last few days, adding to the public’s discomfort due to the sweltering heat in the state.