The central government ambitious plan of replacing all the conventional street lights with energy efficient LED has gained lots of momentum among municipalities across country. Six municipalities, including Agartala and Vizag have already completed the job of changing their streets lights with LED. 90 municipalities have already signed an agreement under the Street light National Programme for the replacement.
Six Urban local bodies (ULB) which have completed the job of installing LED bulbs in their street are Vizag, Jhalawar, Mount Abu, Pushkar, Neelimarna and Agartala. As per one senior official as many as 2,07,000 street lights have been replaced with LED in these areas. The official further informed that installation work is going in 88 ULBS in Delhi, Rajasthan and Andhra Pradesh. Around 9.3 lakh street lights will be replaced in these areas. On Jan 5, this year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had initiated the national programme for 100 cities to go ahead with the conversion of lights.
Street Light National Programme (SLNP) has already enrolled 302 ULBs by September 7 2015. It is targeting to install 15 lakh LEDs by March 16. SLNP has already entered into an agreement with 90 municipalities for this purpose.
Replacement of 3.5 crore conventional street light under SLNP will save huge amount annually. Around 5500 crores are amounted to be saved by municipalities on yearly basis. The Energy Efficient Services (EESL) has been assigned with the task of replacing conventional street lights with LED at its own cost. The huge amount which municipality will save due to cut in energy bills will be used to repay EESL over a period of time.
EESL is going into seven year contract with the municipality whereby it not only guarantees minimum energy saving but also do free replacements and maintenance of lights at no extra cost to the municipality. The service model allows the municipalities to go for this project with no extra capital cost and repayment to EESL. Thus the municipality is not required to incur additional revenue expenditure for switch over to LED lights.
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