The government is planning to replace almost 6% of conventional street lights nationwide by installing two million power-saving light emitting diode street lights during the financial year 2016-'17.
20 Lakh LED street lights to be installed this fiscal year under GoI's #SLNP. #TransformingIndia
The plan is part of a 100-cities national programme, called the Street Lighting National Programme, or #SLNP, launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in January 2015. 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.
The Street Lighting National Programme will replace 35 million conventional street lights with LED bulbs to save 9,000 million units annually.
The project is being implemented by Energy Efficiency Services, a joint venture company of public sector undertakings of the ministry of power.
Energy Efficiency Services has installed 1.15 million LED bulbs across the country as on September 27, 2016, data shows. The replacement is leading to saving of over 38 MW power every day.
Andhra Pradesh has replaced the maximum street lights (4,69,959) with LED bulbs, followed by Rajasthan (4,33,114) and Delhi (1,89,479).
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 shows.
While the LED programme is gaining momentum in India, a warning has been issued by the American Medical Association that LED streetlights emit unseen blue light that can disturb sleep rhythms, the Washington Post reported in September 2016.
This article first appeared on IndiaSpend, a data-driven and public-interest journalism non-profit.