Road users in the city will soon have well-lit streets as the State Government has approved of the Coimbatore Corporation’s proposal to replace street lights.
Commissioner K. Vijayakarthikeyan said the government had accorded administrative sanction to replace the existing lights with LED (light emitting diode) bulbs in 60 wards – the old city area.
The corporation had replaced in phases almost all street lights in the 40 wards that covered the added areas.
Corporation engineers familiar with the development said the civic body had estimated the cost of replacing lights at ₹74.70 crore, including laying cables and replacing switches. The engineers said the work covered laying new cable for 94.70 km and replacing a few thousand switches.
The civic body would meet the expenses from the savings it gained from the Smart Cities Mission fund.
The corporation had installed 58,878 street lights in the 60 wards and of those 12,687 were LEDs. It would exclude those and replace the remaining 46,191 bulbs, which included tube lights, sodium vapour lamps, and CFL.
The reason for the city administration going in for replacing the street lights was not just to better the lighting but also save on power consumption.
In the present set up, the corporation consumed 7,627 kilowatts an hour and this cost ₹1.57 crore a month.
The savings because of the replacement with LED bulbs was estimated to be 3,426 kilowatt an hour and ₹77.19 lakh a month.
This translated to 49% savings in power bill.
The engineers also said that the street light replacement project also included the proposal to replace 3,000-odd bulbs in added areas.
The corporation had already replaced around 20,000 bulbs.
They added that the contractor who would undertake the contract to replace the lights would also take care of the maintenance for around five years.
