PMC tasks MahaPREIT with replacing old street light fittings at Sinhagad Road
The PMC pays ₹153 crores for the usage of 29.10 crore units of electricity across PMC establishments, sewage plants, water treatment plants and streetlights
PUNE: To cut down on increasing power bills, the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) has awarded the state government’s Mahatma Phule Renewable Energy and Infrastructure Technology Limited (MahaPREIT) the work of replacing old/power-guzzling streetlight fittings/equipment with energy-efficient ones and introducing an automatic dimming system in the Sinhagad Road area.
The PMC-MahaPREIT agreement to this effect was signed in July 2023, and MahaPREIT has so far replaced 4,000 out of the 10,870 streetlight fittings in the Sinhagad Road area. If the electricity bills reduce, 80% of the savings will go to MahaPREIT and 20% to the PMC. If successful, the Sinhagad Road pilot will be replicated in other parts of the city.
Srinivas Kandul, additional city engineer, PMC electrical department, said, “We will implement it in other areas too based on the performance of the pilot project. We have been given a deadline of six months to complete the project. In the last three months, MahaPREIT has replaced around 4,000 streetlight fittings.”
“This includes replacing 36-watt, 65-watt, and 90-watt LEDs. They will all come under the supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) system, and we can dim the streetlight LEDs at different times. At present, we only have the facility to turn on or off the streetlights at particular times,” Kandul said.
The PMC pays ₹153 crores for the usage of 29.10 crore units of electricity across PMC establishments, sewage plants, water treatment plants and streetlights. The city has around 2 lakh streetlights. Of these, 90,000 have the fittings of Tata Urban Infrastructure which is maintaining them since 2017 under the smart LED streetlighting project that won the ‘Best Practices Award’ instituted by the Housing and Urban Development Corporation (HUDCO). The PMC maintains the remaining streetlights. As per the contract with Tata Urban Infrastructure, the latter will operate and maintain its share of streetlights till 2029.
A senior official of the PMC electrical department said, “MahaPREIT is not doing quality work. They are replacing existing streetlight fittings with low-quality fittings. While we have instructed them to replace with good quality fittings, they have certain limitations as a government company…”
