Rain relief on Wednesday evening was greeted with a round of power cuts as CESC kept its fingers crossed about demand dipping with the Celsius slide.

There were phased power cuts in large parts of south, north and central Calcutta, as well as Howrah.

The power cuts were despite “higher generation and higher sent out power” compared to the past few weeks by CESC units.

The blame on Wednesday was on reduced supplies from the West Bengal State Electricity Distribution Company Limited.

The supply-demand report card at 5pm on Wednesday read 1,357MW-1,487MW, resulting in rotational power cuts for up to an hour.

“The shortfall will reduce significantly once the demand comes down under the cooling effect of the evening rain,” said a CESC official.

After a three-week period of power cuts, the CESC had briefly managed to meet full demand of 1,509MW on Tuesday evening.