After launching the ambitious drive to replace traditional lights with LED bulbs to ensure energy savings, the utilities are now contemplating introducing metering devices to measure energy saving through these lights.
The Energy department in association with the Energy Efficiency Services Limited has completed distribution of around 35 lakh LED bulbs in the domestic sector and around 80,000 LED streetlights in Visakhapatnam. The measures forming part of the demand side management based Energy Efficient Lighting Programme are part of the Rs. 1,000 crore investment proposed by the EESL to achieve energy savings of close to 300 million units in the State.
The programme, according to senior officials, however, has challenges like the capacity of the industry to ramp up the manufacturing facilities and supply to meet the expectations of the State government in a time bound manner. Ensuring quality and performance standards of streetlights to deliver energy efficiency has been another area that needs to be tackled while there are concerns regarding the infrastructure and integration of a centralised control and monitoring system to ensure performance of these energy efficient devices.
These issues would be discussed at length during a round table conference of the CEOs and top functionaries of LED manufacturing units being organised in Hyderabad on March 10. The conference, to be inaugurated by Minister P. Narayana, would be attended among others by representatives of Bureau of Energy Efficiency, EESL, Electric Lamp and Component Manufacturers’ Association and LED Products Manufacturing Association.