THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Kerala is gearing up for an LED revolution. The government is all set to roll out a comprehensive project to replace CFLs, incandescent bulbs and tube lights in all homes in the state with LEDs. Streetlights too will be ‘converted’ to LEDs.The project, intended as a flagship initiative of the LDF Government alongside solar power penetration in the power sector over the next three years, will be formally launched by Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan shortly.
To be implemented by the Kerala State Electricity Board (KSEB), the LED project will have the support of the Energy Management Centre, Kerala, and the Agency for Non-conventional Energy and Rural Technology (ANERT), sources said.According to sources, incandescent bulbs and CFLs will be replaced with 9-watt LEDs and conventional tube lights with 18-watt LED tubes.The project will also include a component for recycling the collected CFLs (compact fluorescent lamps), bulbs and tube lights. To involve the public from the beginning, KSEB has already invited their suggestions on logos and names for both the LED initiative and the rooftop solar plant programme.
Under the Domestic Efficiency Lighting Programme (DELP), KSEB has already distributed 1.5 crore LEDs to its consumers. Under it, consumers collected two LEDs at a cost of `65 apiece. LED prices have come down even further in the market now. On the other hand, the upcoming programme is a bigger, comprehensive one intended to ‘convert’ Kerala into an LED state, sources said.
KSEB officers will visit homes to make people aware of the need to shift to LEDs whose energy efficiency levels are way higher compared to CFLs and conventional incandescent bulbs. The average life of an incandescent bulb is pegged at 1,000 hours and that of a CFL at 5,000 hours in the state, but an LED can burn for an average 15,000 hours. In 2012, the KSEB and the EMC had implemented the centrally-funded Bachat Lamp Yojana (BLY) to replace the low-efficiency incandescent bulbs in households with CFLs.