Street Light National Programme

• Government of India, through the Energy Efficiency Services Limited (EESL) under the Ministry of Power, would be retrofitting 10 lakh conventional street lights with LED lights in Gram Panchayats of 7 districts in Andhra Pradesh.
• This is the first project for rural LED street lighting in the country under the Government of India’s Street Lighting National Project (SLNP).
• This replacement drive in rural areas will help the gram panchayats to cumulatively save approximately 147 million units of electricity annually and lead to reduction of 12 crore tonnes of CO2.
• The entire upfront capital cost of this project is being funded by French Development Agency Agence Française de Développement (AFD).
• As part of the project, EESL would be carrying out the entire annual maintenance and warranty replacement in these gram panchayats for a period of 10 years.
• Nationally, over 23 lakh conventional street lights have been replaced by LED street lights in 21 States of India.

About Street Light National Programme:

• Indian Prime minister has launched this programme on 5th January to convert conventional street and domestic lights with energy efficient LED lights.
• Under Street Light National Programme (SLNP), replacement of 3.5 crore conventional street light will result in saving of 9,000 million units annually. Total cost savings of municipalities every year will be Rs 5,500 crore. 
• Keeping future generations in mind, the revolutionary step is taken to conserve as much energy as possible.
• Energy Efficiency Services Limited (EESL) has been designated as the implementing agency. The initiative is part of the Government’s efforts to spread the message of energy efficiency in the country.

Objective of SLNP Programme

• The main objective is to promote efficient lighting, enhance awareness on using efficient equipment which reduce electricity bills and help preserve environment.
• EESL replaces the conventional street lights with LEDs at its own costs and consequent reduction in energy and maintenance cost of the municipality is used to repay EESL over a period of time.
• The contracts that EESL enters into with Municipalities are typically of 7 years duration where it not only guarantees a minimum energy saving but also provides free replacements and maintenance of lights at no additional costs to the municipalities.
• The service model enables the municipalities to go in for the state of the art street light with no upfront capital cost and repayments to EESL are within the present level of expenditure. Thus there is no additional revenue expenditure required to be incurred by the municipality for change over to smart and energy efficient LED street lights.

By: Vishal