Retail Market Price of LED Bulbs needs correction to make it affordable -Shri Piyush Goyal

Retail Market Price of LED Bulbs needs correction to make it affordable -Shri Piyush Goyal

EESL distributes over 3 crore LED Bulbs, helps India become energy efficient

Shri Piyush Goyal, Union Minister for Power, Coal and New & Renewable Energy has said that the world today is looking for the massive roll out of LED programme in India. While officially announcing the milestone of distributing over three crore LED Bulbs by Energy Efficiency Services Limited (EESL) under DELP programme here today, Shri Goyal felt that there is a need for correction of the retail market price of LED bulbs and suggested the industry to look for more innovative retail platforms in order to make it more affordable to the people. In this regard, he urged the industry to join the ‘Make in India’ programme for manufacturing the basic components of LED bulbs in the country.

Appreciating the efforts of EESL for achieving the historic milestone, Shri Goyal said that the success of the programme will strengthen India’s stand at forthcoming COP21 at Paris and will present India as a responsible nation.

Before interacting with the media, Shri Goyal had detailed interaction with the industry representatives in which he took their feedback and suggestions on the DELP programme. The Minister assured all the stakeholders his full support for the growth of the industry.

The Minister also released “Monitoring and Verification Report of Street Lighting and DELP Projects” on the occasion.

Speaking at the event, Dr. Ajay Mathur, Director General, Bureau of Energy Efficiency said that to meet the energy needs of our future, we need to increase electricity generation by at least 6 times. Energy efficiency will play a key role in this, because the cost of saving energy is only one-third of the cost of generating it. The three crore milestone is very significant and EESL has done a great job in achieving this milestone in such a short span of time.

Shri Saurabh Kumar, Managing Director EESL, said that the achievement is evident from the fact that as a nation we are open to adopting and deploying new energy efficient technology and of our seriousness towards energy efficiency. We are currently distributing more than 15 lakh LEDs every week and this number will only go up. Shri Kumar said that EESL will cover the entire country by February 2016 and achieve distribution of 15 crore LED bulbs by March 2016.

Energy Efficiency Services Limited (EESL), a public sector entity under Ministry of Power, has taken up the project of distributing LED bulbs under its flagship initiative, the Domestic Efficient Lighting Programme (DELP). The Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi inaugurated the DELP scheme on 5^th January 2015. The scheme is presently running in six states in India – Rajasthan, Delhi, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh and Himachal Pradesh and is rapidly expanding across all other states. The three crore LED Bulbs distributed by EESL will result in an annual energy savings of 4 billion Kwh, capacity addition avoidance of 900 MW and cost savings of Rs 304 crore.

Distributing three crore LED bulbs have helped avoid peak demand of over 975 MW. This massive scheme has impacted over 90 lakh consumers across the country and has led to reducing over 8000 tonnes of CO2 emissions. India has made an international commitment of reducing its carbon emission intensity by 30-35%. Building capacities while adopting and deploying new energy efficient technology, and other technologies to reduce carbon emissions is one of the mitigation strategies that India has.

The target of the DELP is to replace all the 77 crore incandescent bulbs sold in India by LEDs. This will result in reduction of 20,000 MW load, energy savings of 100 billion KWh and Green House Gas (GHG) emissions savings of 80 million tons every year. The annual saving in electricity bills of consumers will be Rs. 40,000 crore, considering average tariff of Rs. 4 per kWh.

BACKGROUNDER OF DELP

The Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi inaugurated the DELP scheme in January 2015, to be executed across 100 cities. Through this scheme, residential consumers are provided with high quality LED bulbs given at a concessional rate of Rs.100-105 as against the market price of Rs 350 to 450. The DELP scheme has also significantly impacted the market price of LED bulbs, through a combination of aggregation and transparent procurement. EESL has been able to procure LED bulbs for Rs 73 as of June 2015 , down from Rs 310 in February, 2014, a reduction of over 75%.

This scheme is readily adopted by the state DISCOMS because EESL makes a 100% upfront investment and no additional budget allocation by the former. Recovery of the investment by EESL is either through monetisation of energy savings or through easy EMIs over a period of 10 months from consumer’s electricity bills.

DELP Dashboard:

National DELP Dashboard is an integrated, real-time, and web-based dashboard which dynamically refreshes at an interval of 15-sec to display in real-time, number of LEDs distributed at national level. This is achieved by aggregating real-time feeds from multiple states where DELP is ongoing.

MICROSITE:

Through www.iledtheway.in microsite, consumers can take a pledge of switching to LED bulbs, which are safer, brighter and consume less energy. The Microsite visitors can join the movement by simply clicking “Take a Pledge” tab which is prominently displayed on the homepage.

BENEFITS TO CONSUMERS:

Under this scheme, superior quality energy efficient LED bulbs are distributed to domestic consumers at one-third the market priceat designated centres. The consumers’ electricity bills are estimated to get reduced by about Rs. 160-400 per year with each LED, thus making the cost recovery lesser than a year.

The milestone of distributing three crore LED bulbs have helped avoid peak demand of over 975 MW. This massive scheme has impacted over 90 lakh consumers across the country and has led to reducing over 8000 tonnes of CO2 emissions. India has made an international commitment of reducing its carbon emission intensity by 30-35%. Lighting up of 3 crore LEDs is equivalent to growing 72 million tree and is equivalent to 144 thousand garbage trucks of waste recycled. Building capacities while adopting and deploying new energy efficient technology, and other technologies to reduce carbon emissions is one of the mitigation strategies that India has.

The LED bulb under the DELP scheme is technologically superior from the other bulbs in the market. A 7W LED procured under DELP gives the same and in most cases better lumen intensity and brightness than a 60W Incandescent bulb. The lumen output of a 60 Watt incandescent bulb is 450 lumens. Whereas, the lumen output of a 7 watt LED bulb, offered as part of the DELP scheme, is 600 lumens. The proportion of lumens that falls in an area from an LED light source is greater than that of a conventional light source. The LED bulbs distributed under this scheme have a three-year free replacement warranty. The LED bulbs given under this scheme are 50%-80% more efficient than CFLs and other incandescent bulbs.