National Streetlight Plan 

Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched 100 cities National Programme on 5th January to convert conventional street and domestic lights with energy efficient LED lights. Under Street Light National Programme (SLNP), replacement of 3.5 crore conventional street light will result in saving of 9,000 million units annually. Total cost savings of municipalities every year will be Rs 5,500 crore.

Keeping future generations in mind, the revolutionary step is taken to conserve as much energy as possible. Energy Efficiency Services Limited (EESL) has been designated as the implementing agency. The initiative is part of the Government’s efforts to spread the message of energy efficiency in the country. The ambitious plan is to convert all street lights across the country to energy-efficient LED bulbs by the end of 2018.

All these streetlights require 3,400 MW power. With LED bulbs, this can be brought down to 1,400 MW, saving 9000 million kWh of electricity annually. The Electricity Distribution Company and Energy Efficiency Services Limited (EESL) a public sector body, are implementing the programme.

The main objective is to promote efficient lighting, enhance awareness on using efficient equipment which reduce electricity bills and help preserve environment. EESL replaces the conventional street lights with LEDs at its own costs and consequent reduction in energy and maintenance cost of the municipality is used to repay EESL over a period of time.

The government is planning to replace almost 6% of conventional street lights nationwide by installing two million power-saving light emitting diode (LED) street lights during the financial year 2016-17. When finished, the LED street lights will save municipalities Rs 5,000 crore every year, according to this September 2015 note from the Press Information Bureau. SLNP will replace 35 million conventional street lights with LED bulbs to save 9,000 million units annually.

EESL has installed 1.15 million LED bulbs across the country as on September 27, 2016, data show. The replacement is leading to saving of over 38 MW power every day. Andhra Pradesh has replaced the maximum street lights (469,959) with LED bulbs, followed by Rajasthan (433,114) and Delhi (189,479). The power ministry is also implementing Ujala, a national programme to distribute subsidised LED bulbs to households. As many as 163 million LED bulbs have been distributed across the country till September 27, data show.