Sir,
Apropos to the letter ‘Maintain street lights: Conserve electricity’ by Prof. B.S. Shankara (‘SOM’ dated June 8). Similar to the street lights in the city limits, the street lights on Outer Ring Road (ORR) are being switched on early wasting the electricity.
The pathetic condition was non-payment of dues that resulted in darkness on 42-km-long ORR for several months. These were switched on only with the intervention of District in-charge Minister very recently.
There was a lack of clarity on who will pay the pending electricity bills for the earlier period amounting to Rs. 1.5 crore to Chamundeshwari Electricity Supply Corporation (CESC). Thanks to the District Minister for solving the dispute and guiding the MCC and MUDA to share the bill equally and not to keep pending in the future.
However, recently I saw street lights glowing on the Ring Road at 6 pm itself, and there was a good amount of daylight at that time. Instead of switching on and switching off of street lights at a fixed time in the day, a lot of electricity and money can be saved if street lights are regulated as per the requirement. For this, automatic street light controllers or smart street light system can be installed, and the cost can be shared by both MCC and MUDA equally, as done for the payment of electricity bill for the street lights.
These units can be programmed based on the availability of daylight. A similar system of street lights that switch on automatically when it is dark and switch off when daylight starts in the morning was installed in New Delhi recently. This type of system may be planned not only for the Ring Road, but also for the entire city to reduce the money for electricity consumption considerably, and to save energy, which is the need of the hour.
– Dr. S. V. N. Vijayendra, Roopanagar, 9.6.2020
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Both Prof.B. S. Shankara (retd ) and Dr. Vijayendra have stressed on urgency in setting up of “automatic switching on and off controllers” for street lights in Mysuru.I would add — better late than never. Jaipur city started installing locally manufactured system ( known as DDSS or Dusk Dawn Switching System )way back in 1996/97 on a trial basis and encouraged by its success later extended it to other towns. In 1998, I had proposed this system to the MCC, Mysore via a private company ( closed long back )but no one showed interest to pursue the matter.
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A poster called Bala , suggested controlling these street lights through a smart phone, and argued that he could not get into technicalities of it!
I suggested the control of the entire city, not the sections of it, by a centrally computer controlled systems. Locally-speaking they are micro controllers operating switches,, which is a less flexible solution with a clock. A centrally controlled system can be programmed taking into account the seasonal Sun rise and Sun set timings. This is what is done in every Western country. In Europe , there is an added complexity of adjustments of Summer and Winter clocks too. But the system in place in every city or rtwn in every Western country handles this well with safety.
The street lights are powered by distributed power network emanating from a central control: a very old concept and yet a very successful one, as it is the way street lights are lights are power in every Western country. The MCC is the controlling authority, but the electricity-related matters are the responsibility of the Electricity Board office concerned with the city. It needs them working together.
If a much more sophisticated signalling and routing of trains on tracks can be done these days , with central control of an entire route ( Like Mysore-Bangalore trains routed on both directions with appropriate signalling ), this problem can be solved with less effort.
Yes, well said. Today till 6:30 a.m. in Siddharthnagar, all the street lights were still merrily shining, though they have been quite unnecessary for at least an hour. And the rest of us citizens are left to pay the cost.