Panchkula civic body set to replace conventional streetlights with LEDs

Sanjay Bumbroo

Tribune News Service

Panchkula, September 21 

To reduce the expenditure on electricity bills, the Panchkula Municipal Corporation is all set to replace the street lights with LED lights across the city.

More than 25,000 lights will be installed in the city, including 1,600 new light points identified by the corporation. Interestingly, the corporation will not have to bear the cost of replacing the lights as it has decided not to change the existing electricity polls.

MC Administrator Rajesh Jogpal said: “The work has been allotted to ESL Company, which had installed the LED lights in Chandigarh, through a tender.” He said the project solves various purposes, such as saving of energy, automatic functioning of street lights, and a centralised system.

Jogpal said the work on the project was going on at a fast pace as 4,000 new LED lights have been installed. He said at present, there were more than 18,500 street lights in the city which will be converted into LED. Besides this, the MC has also identified 1,600 new points where lights are to be installed. He said the financial details were being worked out and efforts were being made to make payments out of the MC’s savings only. 

Jogpal said during financial year 2017-18, Rs 86.52 lakh were paid to the regular staff and contractual employees of the electricity wing of the corporation, while Rs 147.07 lakh were spent on the maintenance of the electrical items. He said electricity bills to the tune of Rs 393.54 lakh were paid during the same period and added that with the installation of LEDs, the MC hoped to save funds spent on electricity which could be used for carrying out development works.