Udaipur : Rajasthan becomes the first state to adopt Government of India’s Street Lighting National Programme (SLNP) in all their Urban Local Bodies (ULB). Almost5 lakh conventional street lights have been replaced with LED street lights in the state. The newly installed LED streetlights in Rajasthan have led to brighter streets, feeling of enhanced safety and security among the residents. The entire street light project has been funded by Energy Efficiency Services Limited (EESL) at no cost to the state. EESL, a Public Energy Services Company under the administration of Ministry of Power, Government of India (GoI), is the implementing agency for SLNP.
EESL has retrofitted Energy Efficient LED street lamps across the state of Rajasthan. Through implementation of this project energy savings achieved so far have been 152 million units, and cost saving to the municipality of Rs. 60 lakh daily. This has also resulted in reduction of 225 tonnes of CO2 per day. EESL procurements conform to BIS specification & 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 13lakh lights installed by EESL in the country.
Mr Saurabh Kumar, Managing Director, EESL, said, “It is always the endeavor of the government and the Municipal Corporation to provide well lit streets to the citizens. With LED street lights, we can ensure bright streetlights with less dark spots, with upto 60% less energy consumption. We have successfully retrofitted close to almost 5 lakh LED lamps in Rajasthan, and working with the Municipal corporations to make Rajasthan one of the first states to be completely lit with LED lights.”
In the approach of the Smart Cities Mission, the objective is to promote cities that provide core infrastructure and give a decent quality of life to its citizens, a clean and sustainable environment and application of ‘Smart’ Solutions. In our quest to take this forward, Udaipur and Ajmer have already lead the way to energy efficiency. EESL has replaced over 35 thousand conventional street in Udaipur, with an investment of over 25 crore which has resulted in reduction of peak load by 1.4thousand kWh, making them 51% more energy efficient. The project has resulted in energy saving of 6.36 million units per annum as well as monetary savings to the municipality of over Rs. 4.4 crore. In Ajmer, over 33 thousand lamps have been replaced, with an investment of over 14 crore by EESL. The project here has benefited Ajmer with reduction in peak load of 58% which translates to over 4.6 million units of energy saved per annum and over 3.7 crore in monetary savings.
Energy efficiency assumes significance for the nation in the current environment of shortages and concerns over climate change. Lighting itself accounts for about 20% of the total electricity consumption in India. Hon’ble Prime Minister, on 5th January, 2015 launched 100 cities National Programmes on efficient lighting technology domestically and Street Lighting National Programme (SLNP) to replace 3.5 crore conventional street lights with smart and energy efficient LED street lights by March, 2019.
