The Ghaziabad municipal corporation (GMC) on Monday started replacing incandescent tube lights and sodium lights with power-efficient LED lights for street lighting. It is estimated that the project will save the corporation nearly Rs8 crore in electricity bills per year.
At present, the corporation pays nearly Rs17 crore as annual electricity charges.
The exercise was started simultaneously in all five municipal zones and is being undertaken by a private firm.
“Apart from the estimated savings of Rs8 crore, the corporation will also get 25% of the savings from the electricity bills while the company will get 75% of the difference amount, as per the agreement. The maintenance cost of the streetlights will also be borne by the company for seven years,” said Ashu Kumar Verma, city mayor.
Besides undertaking the maintenance, the company will also arrange for ‘smart lighting’ feature, by which streetlights will be turned off during daytime and turned on automatically in the evening, officials said.
Officials said that the corporation will not pay for the replacement of 50,214 streetlights with LED lights of wattages 120, 80, 65 and 18. The proposal for replacement of streetlights with LED lights was also cleared by the corporation board in November 2016.
At present, the streetlights installed in the five zones of Ghaziabad are of 400, 250, 150, 85, 70 and 40 wattage. As many as 9,971 of these are in the city zone, 12,845 in Kavi Nagar, 10,082 in Mohan Nagar, 10,408 in Vasundhara zone and 6,908 in Vijay Nagar.
Source: http://www.hindustantimes.com
