Faced with a relentless upward spiral of its power bills, the City Corporation is now considering two alternatives that come with the guarantee of reducing power consumption greatly. The annual bill this time was Rs.7 crore and the figure was expected to touch Rs.11 crore, taking into account the recent hike in electricity tariff.
An expert committee comprising officials from the City Corporation, the Kerala State Electricity Board, and a Professor from the College of Engineering, Thiruvananthapuram would soon be constituted to assess the relative merits of two varieties of ‘power-saving’ light bulbs installed at two locations in the capital city.
While the first of the magnetic induction lights were installed in September 2011 by the side of the road leading to the eastern gate of the Sree Padmanabhaswamy Temple, the first of the LED lights were switched on by Mayor K. Chandrika at the Mavaneeyam road on Tuesday. The makers of both these bulb varieties had claimed that their product would lead to substantial savings in the power bill of the City Corporation.
Chairman of the corporation’s works standing committee V.S. Padmakumar told The Hindu here that the committee would study various aspects of the performance of these lights before taking a final call on the issue.
“We would study the luminosity, performance under warranty conditions, the difference in energy consumption levels of the two varieties of lights, and their set-up costs. Once the company was finalised, the contract would be awarded on a BOT basis,” he explained. After this, electricity meters would be installed at different points in the city. The Corporation’s plan was to install the meters in half the Corporation area in the next financial year.
The ‘mag-coupled’ lights installed on an experimental basis in front of the temple reportedly consumed only 80 watts of power as against a sodium vapour lamp which used about 250 watts.
The company manufacturing these lights had offered a five-year warranty.
These lights were also said to emit lesser heat. This lighting system was manufactured by a Mumbai-based company called Diaonics Automation Private Ltd.
The Bangalore based company, Innovlite (India) Private Ltd., that manufactured the LED lights installed on Tuesday claimed that their product would bring about a 70 per cent reduction in power consumption and an 80 per cent reduction in operational and maintenance costs. Company officials also claimed that these lights lasted over 50,000 hours and had been effectively functioning in parts of Bangalore.
