Street Lighting National Programme covers 50,000 km of Indian roads

The Centrally-sponsored Street Lighting National Programme (SLNP) has illuminated 50,000 km of Indian roads with installation of 30 lakh LED street lights across the country. With this, Energy Efficiency Services Ltd, a Central PSU under the power ministry and the implementing agency of SLNP, has become the world’s largest street light management company, a government release said.

The installation of 30 lakh LED street lights has resulted in 390 million kwh of annual energy savings, avoided capacity of over 104.19 mw to the Urban Local Bodies (ULBs).

Rajasthan leads: Under SLNP, Rajasthan is leading the country with an installation of 7.85 lakh LED street lights followed by Andhra Pradesh and Gujarat with 6.03 lakh and 5.4 lakh respectively. Presently, EESL is retrofitting 15,000 conventional lights with LED street lights every day. Project is near completion in the states of Himachal Pradesh, Tripura and Gujarat.

EESL is also implementing a special heritage lighting project in Kashi region of Uttar Pradesh where 4,000 lights are being installed. The programme has also recently commenced in the cities of Chandigarh and Port Blair, Andaman and Nicobar Islands.

Prices drop: The procurement price of the LED street lights has been reduced from Rs.135 per watt to Rs.80 per watt due to mass procurement of the lights.

How it works: EESL makes the entire upfront investment in installation of the street lights and no additional budget allocation from the Municipalities is required. Municipalities pay EESL from the savings in energy and maintenance cost over a 7-year period, making the LED lights affordable and accessible.

EESL also undertakes social audits in ULBs where the project is under implementation and post the completion of the project. Few of the social audit results give a clear indication that the overall satisfaction level and the perception of safety among the citizens is extremely high from the newly installed LED street lights.

EESL procurements conform to BIS specification 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 per cent in the 30 lakh lights installed by EESL in the country. EESL has maintained an uptime of 97 per cent for all street lights across the country.

Also Read: World’s largest LED street lighting project in Hyderabad