When Earth Hour was observed on Saturday, Delhi saved 600 MW of power — the highest for any Metro city in India — just by switching off non-essential lights.
Since power not used amounts to power not produced, the saving is as good as having a mid-sized captive power plant (the
Badarpur thermal power plant, for instance, is 700 MW) or cutting roughly 324 tons of carbon dioxide emission.
In other words, it was as good as taking 23.5 lakh small cars off the road (at the rate of 140 grams per kilometre of CO2 emission by each 800-1,000cc car).
The Environment Depart-ment had requested 2,000 schools, 120 colleges and 2,000 RWAs to take part in the event, besides asking government officials to cooperate. “We also urged the tourism ministry to either switch off or dim the lights at historical monuments,” said environment secretary J.K. Dadoo.
According to Delhi Transco Ltd, the electricity carrier of the Capital, power load between 8.30 pm and 9.30 pm dropped from 2,600 MW to around 1,650 MW.
Around 400 MW saved was due to weather and tripping of two transmission lines, an official said.