Energy saver: MC cuts street light electricity bills by Rs 158 cr

Tribune News Service

Nitin Jain

Ludhiana, February 6

In what appears to be a way to energy efficiency, which turned out to be a big money saver for the civic body, the Municipal Corporation (MC) has cut down its street light electricity bills by a whopping Rs 158 crore in the past five years, officials have said.

It has been achieved through the smart LED street-lighting project under which old ordinary lights on roads and streets spanning over 4,000 km across 159.39 sq km area under the MC limits have been replaced with energy efficient smart LEDs, the civic body has disclosed.

Rajya Sabha MP Sanjeev Arora, who reviewed the progress of the project here recently, was briefed by MC Commissioner Sandeep Rishi about the implementation of the smart LED street-lighting project with a centralised control and monitoring system in Ludhiana, which has the biggest and largest civic body in the state, in terms of area and population.

The ruling Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) member in the Upper House of Parliament from Punjab told The Tribune on Tuesday that the MC had entered into an agreement with a private company in August 2018 to replace all ordinary lights with energy efficient smart LED streetlights across seven Assembly constituencies falling under the MC limits.

Under the agreement, centralised control and monitoring system (CCMS) panels were installed for controlling and operating street light fixtures on an energy-saving mechanism.

Arora said as many as 1,05,236 luminaries and 1,474 switching points had already been replaced so far following which the MC had been able to save Rs 158 crore on its electricity bill charged on the street lights, which operate 10 hours daily.

Besides, there has been a new proposal to add 15,000 new streetlights, of which 5,000 have already been installed across four municipal zones and 95 wards, having over 25 lakh population.

The MC chief told the Rajya Sabha MP that the electricity consumption on street lights had come down almost one-third to 12,50,57,461 kWh after the new smart LED lights replaced the old lights, which used to consume 34,10,22,078 kWh of energy.

With this, the energy bill on street lights has been cut by a whopping over 63 per cent from Rs 2,49,02,84,326 on old streetlights to Rs 91,32,21,330 paid on smart LED lights.

Of the total savings of Rs 1,57,70,62,996 on the street light power bill, the 85 per cent share, as per the agreement, which accounted for Rs 1,34,05,03,547, has been paid to the private company, which has invested on the replacement of old lights with smart LEDs under the ambitious CCMS project.

Smart city in making

The project was part of the ongoing Smart City Mission (SCM) under which Ludhiana is emerging as the best smart city in Punjab by ranking first in the state and 53rd among 100 cities being developed as smart in the country.

The latest rankings were released by the Union Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA) recently.

While 52 projects worth Rs 219 crore had already been completed, 16 schemes worth Rs 549.1 crore were under execution and four deposit works had been tendered at the cost of Rs 161.9 crore.

The total allocated funds of Rs 889.25 crore, comprising Rs 441 crore Centre’s share and Rs 448.25-crore state share had already been received, of which Rs 778.25 crore had been utilised, which account for 87.59 per cent of total funding so far.

This time’s ranking was better for Ludhiana than 2020 when it was ranked at 54th spot in the country. Since then, the city’s ranking has been constantly improving. From 54th rank in 2020, Ludhiana had ranked 37th in 2021, 48th in 2022, 32nd in January last year, 48th in October 2023, and 53rd in January 2024.

However, the latest ranking was five spots down than the previous one and 21 positions below the January 2023 rank but a jump of 1 spot in the past four years.

But despite the national rankings going down, Ludhiana continues to remain the best among three smart cities in the state since 2023.

In 2022, Ludhiana was adjudged second best in Punjab with Jalandhar bagging the top spot. This time, Jalandhar has slipped to third rank in the state with 82nd rank in the country while Amritsar has ranked 80th in the country and has stood second in Punjab.

The rankings were decided on the basis of various parameters, mainly depending on the progress of works under the SCM, by taking into consideration details of projects completed, in progress, under tendering and still under planning, besides analysing the expenditure aspect as well.

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