Kolkata faced intermittent power cuts Wednesday night and Thursday morning after a 250 mw unit of the Budge Budge power plant, run by private power utility CESC, tripped.
The power plant tripped on Wednesday night following a tube leak leading to a power shortfall of 200 mw in the city, senior CESC official D N Majumdar said.
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He said the problem could have been tackled by drawing at least 350 mw from the state grid, but this could not be done due to some problem in the grid as well.
As a result, CESC was forced to resort to widespread load shedding, Majumdar said.
CESC's own generation is around 1000 mw and it draws 250-300 mw from the state grid to meet the city's requirement of around 1250 mw.