By the end of Jan 2015 LEDs will light up the Marine Drive

LEDs will light up the Marine Drive

Soon you will experience the pleasant look in Queen’s Necklace while driving in night because this place will be brightly lit up by LED’s by the end of this month. State government has been decided to implement the LEDs in place of streetlights. The same will be implemented in the other parts of city and its suburbs by the end of October 2015. On January 2, 2015 the decision was made after the meeting between senior officials of the state, centre and civic body. Devendra Fadnavis, Chief Minister of Maharashtra, will inaugurate the pilot project on January 31, 2015 at Marine Drive. The same day he will also visit the Mulund in the central suburbs and Bandra in the western suburbs to see the installed LEDs.

In present, there are more than 1.32 lakh electricity poles in all over the Mumbai and there are more than 2.5 lakh high-pressure sodium lamps are working on these poles, in which some poles have single lamps and others have two or three at per pole. It is expected that the conversion of sodium lamps to LEDs on in the light-emitting diodes will emit more light in night for the comfort of drivers and on the same time it will save at least 30 per cent of electricity. It is expected that the total cost of conversion will be approx. Rs 250 crore, which will be paid by BMC (Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation) in a phased manner. This decision was made after the meeting between Piyush Goyal, Union Power Minister; Chandrashekhar Bawankule, State Power Minister, Ashish Shelar and Amit Satam, Legislators; Sitaram Kunte, Municipal Commissioner; SVR Srinivas, Additional Municipal Commissioner; OP Gupta, General Manager of BEST and other officials from the Energy Efficiency Services Limited, which is a a subsidiary of the Central government.

Ashish Shelar, a Legislator, stated that, “These LEDs will the annual electricity cost of Municipal Corporation. According to records currently, BMC is paying Rs 164 crore to various agencies that maintain the sodium lamps, but after the implementation of LEDs the annual electricity cost will reduce by Rs 80 crore, which is 50 per cent of annual electricity cost. The more he added that the Centre’s subsidiary will put up these lighting systems, operate and maintain the lights for seven years.

According to anonymous sources of BEST, who did not want to disclose their names, “There are plans to cut the costs at bus depots and government offices with the help of LEDs as it can help to save money.