Install automatic street light controllers to save energy and money

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