India crosses 1 Cr LED street light mark, installed under SLNP

India has doubled the number of LED street lights from 49 lakh in March 2018 to 1 crore as on 1 October 2019. This one crore target has been reached by the country even as it missed the scaled-down target to replace 1.34 crore conventional street lights with energy efficient LED lights by March 2019.

These lights have been installed under Street Light National Programme (SLNP) and are being implemented by state-owned Energy Efficiency Services Ltd (EESL).

As on date, under SLNP, about 1,502 urban local bodies (ULBs) across India have been enrolled under programme and out of these ULBs, work has been completed in around 900 such bodies.

How was target achieved?

To bring large scale transformation, EESL adopted Pay-As-You-Save (PAYS) model, where it makes the entire upfront investment in installation of LED street lights and no additional budget allocation from the municipalities is required. However, the contract with municipalities/ULBs (Urban Local Bodies) is for a period of 7 years. This 7-year contract with Local Bodies guarantees a minimum energy saving of usually 50% as well as provides free replacements and maintenance of lights at no additional cost to civic partners. The municipalities’ then pay EESL from their savings in energy and maintenance cost over a period of 7-year, which further makes LED lights affordable and accessible.

Significance

The one crore LED street lights have covered 2.7 lakh kilometers which resulted in annual savings of 6.7 billion units and avoided 1,119.40 MW of peak power demand.

These 1 crore lights reduce green house gases (GHG) emission by 4.63 million tonnes (MT) every year.

Way Forward

By March 2020, SLNP aims to replace 1.34 crore conventional street lights in India with smart LEDs street lights. This will make a huge difference, enabling peak demand reduction of about 1,500 MW, annual energy savings of 9 billion kWh, and reduction in 6.2 MT of CO2/year.

Also, EESL is planning to bring Rs.8,000 crore investment by 2024 for covering entire rural India in coming 4-5 years. It is also expected that more than 30 million LED street lights will be retrofitted/installed by EESL.

Month: Current Affairs - October, 2019