Government to give all households in West Bengal 4 energy efficient LED bulbs

KOLKATA: All households in West Bengal will soon receive four energy efficient light-emitting diode (LED) bulbs from power utilities as part of state government’s initiate to cut down on energy consumption, said state commerce and industry minister Amit Mitra.
Mitra said consumers would be able to get these bulbs on easy instalment and government will provide assistance to the poor so that they can replace incandescent bulbs and tube lights at home. The proposal has already been cleared by the board of West Bengal State Electricity Distribution Company Ltd. “This will lead to savings of almost 1646 million units of electricity,” he said.

Mitra was talking at the inaugural session of an international lighting industry event here on Friday organized by the Indian Society of Lighting Engineers.

He said the state government has also started LED street lighting initiative in several areas such as Rajpur-Sonarpur municipality, Behala, Falta, Kasba, Calcutta Leather Complex, New Haldia and North Bengal.

“We have adopted various programmes like electrification of 100 schools of which 80 is already completed and the rest will be done by January. We are also installing rooftop solar panels in public health centres, polytechnic colleges, universities, hospitals amongst others,” Mitra said.

The state has also finalized the energy conservation building code and the draft is with the department of power for issuing the gazette notification, Mitra said. “We will be finalising the rules by early next year,” he said.

The minister also used the platform to pitch to the lighting industry for investment in West Bengal. He said the government has ready plug-and-play infrastructure available and invited all the big companies to invest in the lighting equipment or LED bulb and luminaire manufacturing.

The market for LED bulbs and light in India has been growing at over 50% for the last six years and projected to continue this pace of growth for next few years.