LED municipal lighting: understanding the ground realities
Student name: Ms Nishitha Bajaj
Guide: Mr Amit Kumar
Year of completion: 2015
Host Organisation: The Climate Group, New Delhi
Supervisor (Host Organisation): Mr Jay C Shiv
Abstract:
In the present modern-day society, public lighting is ubiquitous. It is essential for preventing crime, avoiding obstacles at night, and providing a sense of security to the pedestrians. However, with increased demand for public lighting, there has been a phenomenal increase in the expenses incurred for this service. Public lighting accounts for nearly 1% of overall energy consumption in India and 6% worldwide. Innovations coupled with advancements in the lighting technologies have significantly improved energy efficiency of lighting systems. LED technology for public lighting has gained significant attention owing to various characteristics including much improved quality of light produced consuming significantly lesser electricity over a much longer life in an environmental friendly manner as compared to other existing technologies such as HPSV, MH, and CFL lamps. However, a wider scale adoption of this technology is being hindered by lack of financing opportunities, political will and limited awareness among the decision makers and implementers. In the present study, an attempt has been made to check the viability of this service as a successful business opportunity for private investors. Furthermore, LEDs have been deployed at a large scale in several cities across the world. Drawing from the experiences of such large scale projects, regular monitoring of installed LED fixtures in Kolkata was done to calculate energy savings from two different scenarios of LED application, viz. energy-efficient and energy-neutral. The projects have displayed huge potential savings in both energy and maintenance costs. The study has also recommended fruitful measures to facilitate smooth implementation of large-scale LED street lighting projects in India.
