Lately, the cottage industries operating in Puducherry that create incense sticks, mats as well as perfumed candles are open late in the nights with their electricity rates intact. Almost 600 km in Andhra Pradesh’s Guntur district, the farmers in mud houses nearby the Krishna River are no more worried about the increasing power bills while they switch on the lights at dusk.
This is due to the LED distribution program sponsored by the government. This program outlines the substitution of the incandescent bulbs as well as CFLs with the energy efficient and competent LED bulbs.
EESL (Energy Efficiency Services Ltd.), which is a PSU operating under the power ministry drives the LED distribution program. Its Managing Director Surabh Kumar stated that the pilot program has already been expanded to all the districts in the state of Andhra Pradesh. It was launched in April 2014 and the pilot project was initiated in Puducherry.
Right now, almost 90 percent of the households in Andhra Pradesh as well as Puducherry have started using LED bulbs that have replaced the incandescent bulbs. This way, the electricity bulbs of an average household has minimized by around Rs 200 per month.
Under this LED distribution program, around 2 crore LED bulbs have been distributed in the states of Maharashtra, Delhi, Rajasthan, Himachal Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh in January this year. The objective of this program is to reduce the power consumption, trim the carbon emission and increase domestic savings. The results of this program are already visible.
Due to the LED distribution program, almost 68 kilowatts of energy is conserved on a daily basis. This also includes a cut in the 645 megawatts of power in the peak hours, 2.71 crore of domestic savings every day and 5,520 tonne drop in the carbon emission every day. Despite consuming lesser power than the incandescent bulbs, the LED bulbs also have a long life of 15,000 hours to 20,000 hours.
The LED project is financed by the consumers via two plans. Under the ‘Onbill EMI’ plan, they consumers have to shell out Rs 105 for one LED bulb for 10 months and this amount is added to their monthly electricity bill. Under the second plan, the consumer can buy four LED bulbs at a time for Rs 100 each. These bulbs also have a three year replacement warranty. The actual price of an LED bulb in the market is Rs 300 to Rs 350.
