lights

India plans to offer subsidized LED lamps to households to reduce power demand and improve energy efficiency.

Measures have been initiated by the ministry of power in India to keep the promise of Prime Minister Modi to provide electricity supply and lamps to all households in the country by the end of the decade. The latest measure is aimed at households and energy efficiency.

 

 

The government plans to offer subsidized LED lamps to households in an attempt to reduce power demand and improve energy efficiency on the demand side. An Energy Efficiency Services company will procure such lamps in bulk and sell them at subsidized rates to consumers. The program will start from the southern state of Andhra Pradesh.

The government of Andhra Pradesh has signed an agreement with an Energy Efficiency Services Limited (EESL), a joint venture company between four public sector companies. The state government had organized a tender bidding for companies to provide LED lamps at the lowest cost. The lowest price quoted for a single lamp was ₹204 ($3.3) while the market price is close to ₹400 ($6.5). The EESL will procure these lamps and sell them at ₹10 ($0.16). Each eligible household will be offered two LED lamps.

The savings realized by the electricity suppliers in the form of low power demand will be paid back to Energy Efficiency Services Limited.

EESL has already procured 2 million LED lamps for distribution in various districts of Andhra Pradesh. The Demand Side Efficient Lighting Programme (DELP) launched by the state government aims to cover 3.7 million households, providing two LED lamps each.

In addition to this scheme, the central government will also work on a similar program aimed solely at households living in poverty. The EESL model has been in implementation in some other jurisdictions of India. About 750,000 LED lamps have been distributed in the union territory of Pudhuchery while ESSL has also retrofitted several streetlights with LED lamps.

LED lamps use about a tenth of the electricity consumed by incandescent lamps, still widely used across the country. India still suffers from significant demand-supply mismatch in the electricity sector. This latest initiative by the Indian government would hopefully reap benefits to the ailing power sector.

Photo credit: uhiworld

Via Clean Technica