Switching to LED

As a part of energy conservation, it is planned to go for replacement of conventional lights with LED lamps on a big scale

Replacing conventional streetlights and domestic incandescent lights with LED lights will result in conservation of billion of units of power every year, according to Saurabh Kumar, Managing Director of Energy Efficiency Services Limited, a joint venture company of PSUs of the Ministry of Power of the Government of India.

The total number of streetlights in the country is estimated at 3.5 crore and 99.5 per cent of them are conventional lights, he says.

“If all the lights are replaced, it will conserve 50 per cent power and save 5 billion units of power every year,” he has told The Hindu here. It may appear to be small with the country consuming 800 billion units of power every year. But the benefits are many particularly the boost it will give to domestic manufacturing industry, he says. For example, the Andhra Pradesh government has directed that in the procurement preference should be given to the industry in the State, he says.

“As we take up more projects, it will encourage more units to get started up in Andhra Pradesh,” he points out.

Going by the example of Visakhapatnam, where streetlights are being replaced with LED lights, the municipal corporation does not have to pay upfront and the cost is borne by the Union government. The expenditure gets carved out of energy saving and maintenance cost. So there is no net out go.

Domestic lighting

Quoting statistics, Mr. Kumar has said 77 crore incandescent bulbs are sold every year in the country and replacing them would result in conserving 25 billion units of power.

Mr. Saurabh Kumar estimates that it will take five years to replace all the incandescent bulbs with LED lights.

Replacing a 60 Watt CFL bulb with 7 Watt LED light will result in saving Rs.500 to Rs.600 every year on each bulb for consumers. More importantly, LED light has a 10 year life span compared to six months of incandescent bulb and two years of CFL, he points out adding by life cycle cost analysis LED is the cheapest.

The cost of a 7 Watt bulb’s price has come down to from 400 to Rs.204 in the last one and a half years. As the volumes increase, the prices will further decrease.

He sees manufacturing as no problem and if demand picks up industry will switch over from CFL to LED. At present there are 80 to 90 small manufacturers of LED lights though the number of lights being manufactured is not much.