It is an Indian electricity generation and the sole distribution company serving 567 square kilometres (219 sq mi) of area administered by the Kolkata municipal corporation, in the city of Kolkata, as well as parts of Howrah, Hooghly, 24 Parganas (North) and 24 Parganas (South) districts in the state of West Bengal.

In 1931, CESC Tunnel was made under Hooghly River for electric power transmission from Kolkata to Howrah.

Load-shedding (interruption of power supply due to shortage of electricity) was common in Kolkata during the 1970s and 1980s.

In addition, the RP-Sanjiv Goenka Group has four captive power plants, with a combined capacity of 76 MW, which are fuelled by the process waste gas produced at its four carbon black manufacturing units in India.

CESC has recently started expansion into renewable energy sector through its subsidiary Purvah Green Projects Ltd,and aiming to build 300 MW solar portfolio.

It was inaugurated by the then Bengal Governor Sir John Arthur Herbert in January 1940 and was one of the oldest plants in the system of CESC.

With a high auxiliary consumption (the energy required to generate power), it used to feed just about 18 MW to the system.

[clarification needed] In September 2013, the first unit of CESC's 2x300 MW thermal power project, and the first one outside West Bengal, was successfully synchronised at Chandrapur, Maharashtra.