New Delhi: The world’s largest streetlight replacement programme, which entails illuminating of 3.6 lakh kilometres of roads across India with 1.34 crore smart LED lights, is being implemented by the Energy Efficiency Services Limited (EESL), a joint venture of the PSUs under the Union Power Ministry.
So far, one crore smart LED streetlights have been installed under Street Lighting National Programme (SLNP).
By March 2020, SLNP aims to replace 1.34 crore conventional streetlights in India with smart LEDs.
This ambitious goal will make a tremendous difference, enabling peak demand reduction of about 1500 MW, annual energy savings of 9 billion kWh, and reduction in 6.2 Million tons of CO2 per year.
EESL has an ambitious plan in this portfolio for the next 4-5 years where it intends to bring investment to the tune of INR 8000 crore by 2024 by covering entire rural India.
It is expected that more than 30 million LED streetlights would be retrofitted/installed by EESL.
The states already covered are Delhi, Punjab, Haryana, Chandigarh, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Jammu & Kashmir, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Assam, West Bengal, Sikkim, Chhattisgarh, Odisha, Andhra Pradesh, Tripura, Telangana, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Goa, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Pondicherry, Port Blair, Lakshadweep and Rajasthan.
This has helped generate employment for around 13000 people in the country, according to EESL.
The installation of 1 crore LED streetlights has resulted in annual energy savings of 6.71 billion kWh and avoided 1,119.40 MW of peak demand, resulting in reduction of GHG emission by 4.63 million tCO2 every year, it said.
Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Power, New & Renewable Energy, R K Singh recently said, “Energy efficiency and conservation are important pillars of India’s efforts in moving towards a sustainable future.”
He said replacing of streetlights with LED lights is not only illuminating the lives of citizens and enabling more savings but also empowering people with better and safe mobility.
“The government believes in empowering people and enabling access to power for all. The Street Lighting National Programme will benefit the people and would lead to a reduction in dark spots and increased security,” the Minister said.
Under the programme, Andhra Pradesh is leading the way amongst the states, with an installation of 28.9 lakhs LED streetlights followed by Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh with 10.3 Lakhs and 9.3 lakhs respectively.
As on date, 1,502 Urban Local Bodies (ULBs) across India have been enrolled under the programme and out of these ULBs, work has been completed in around 900 Urban Local Bodies.
Applauding the achievement, Sanjiv Nandan Sahai, Special Secretary in the Ministry of Power, said, “This is a major milestone in the nation’s journey towards increased energy efficiency and environmental sustainability.”
He said it shows how synergy and collaboration between the various stakeholders can enhance infrastructure and promote energy conservation.
“I congratulate EESL for their relentless efforts and all stakeholders for their strong partnership in making our nation climate smart,” Sahai said.
To bring large scale transformation, EESL adopted Pay-As-You-Save (PAYS) model where EESL makes the entire upfront investment in installation of the LED streetlights and no additional budget allocation from the municipalities is required.
The contract with the municipalities/ULBs is for a period of 7 years. The seven-year contract with the local bodies guarantees a minimum energy saving of typically 50% and provides free replacements and maintenance of lights at no additional cost to the civic partners.
The municipalities pay EESL from their savings in energy and maintenance cost over a 7-year period, making the LED lights affordable and accessible.
Under SLNP, the EESL procurements conform to BIS specifications and carry a 7-year warranty against technical defects. EESL conducts appropriate quality checks right from the bidding stage to the field level.
This has resulted in the LEDs’ overall technical fault being less than 2% in the 1 crore streetlights installed by EESL in the country.
EESL has maintained an uptime of 97% for all streetlights across the country. Furthermore, to provide ‘future-readiness’ to the LED lights, EESL installs web-based Centralised Control and Monitoring System (CCMS) to enable remote operation and monitoring of the streetlights enabling additional operational savings.
CCMS provides real-time information on energy consumption the streetlights.
EESL undertakes social audits in the ULBs where the project is under implementation and post the completion of the project.
These social audit results have shown that about 99 per cent of respondents feel more comfortable with the LED installations. They also feel that there is significant improvement in safety and business activities.
