How Power is Delivered to You.

Electrical power has become almost as much of a necessity as water in our everyday lives. No one really thinks much about it until an outage occurs and it isn't there. It is used twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, fifty-two weeks a year. We use it for heating, cooling, cooking, refrigeration, light, sound, motion, computation and entertainment. Electrical power is a dynamic commodity and must be produced as it is being used. Production of electrical power we use occurs in many power plants accross the state of Orissa. The majority of these plants burn coal to produce electrical power, however, some are powered by water (hydroelectric), natural gas, oil, nuclear, wind and geothermal. In all cases energy from the fuel source is used to spin an electrical generator producing three-phase AC electrical power.

CESU has no generation capacity of its own. Electrical power used on the CESU Electric distribution system is purchased from NTPC/GRIDCO/OHPC through different Services.

NTPC provides this power from its coal fired generation at the Talcher power plant. The remainder is purchased from OHPC.

At most power plants electrical power is generated at 11KV. In the generating station generator is used to step the voltage up to a transmission voltage level somewhere between 132KV - 500KV. This high voltage electrical power is then transported from the power plant to primary distribution substations through the transmission system. These extremely high voltages used on the transmission system allow for a greater amount of power to be transported across the system with less electrical line losses and greater efficiency. These transmission lines are supported by either steel towers or wood poles, primarily dependent upon the level of voltage of the transmission line.