Dinesh Kamath's Editorial 'Solve problems relating to street lights' that was published in Newsband

Solve problems relating to street lights

Problems relating to street lights are common in India, especially in rural areas. Public lighting in most cities is inadequate and has led to poor road safety conditions and loss of precious energy.

Local bodies should provide lights every 40 metres and the level of illumination has to be a minimum of 35 lux. Many cities do have streetlights but the truth is that a large number of street lights do not function properly. The local bodies, which periodically survey and evaluate urban services, repeatedly and conspicuously fail to enumerate lighting facilities.

Many cities continue to use Mercury and Sodium vapour lamps, which have a poor lamp life and relatively low luminous efficacy, defined as the rate of conversion of electrical power to light. On the other hand, Light Emitting Diode (LED) lamps have 50,000 hours of life and are highly efficient. For a given unit of power, LED lamps provide better light. By converting existing lights to LED lamps, cities can reduce energy use, expenditure and green house gas emissions.

Most local bodies use manual switching systems, which keep street lights on for a fixed time. Such static systems should be replaced by smart ones.  

Revamping street lighting and using LED lamps would entail higher capital cost, but the savings in terms of operational and maintenance expenditure would offset this quickly. What is more important is that efficiently lit streets would provide a safe environment and create a sustainable city.

The reason behind the inefficiency in providing basic infrastructural and other facilities to the citizen is the lack of political will, maintenance and monitoring, and the widespread corruption in the process. Many cities of India are facing the quality issues in providing even the street lights. These cities get most of the revenues by taxes and hence it is a shame in the name of development.

Solar energy can also be used for street lighting with LED lamps. The street lamps can have its own solar panel on the top to tap the energy for its lighting in urban areas to reduce the dependency on conventional power. The open space available could be converted into energy generating area by installing solar power panels. In rural pockets, street lighting can very well be made fully functional with solar power as there will be less number of installations required as compared to urban areas. It should be made mandatory for all government buildings, offices to have solar power installations to meet maximum requirement of power from solar.

Thus the government should do something drastic to solve all problems relating to street lights.