EESL to Invest Rs 36 bn in UP and Raise Funds from Asian Development Bank

In an effort to make India, energy efficient, EESL (Energy Efficiency Services Limited) has announced that it will invest close to INR 36 billion in Uttar Pradesh under various power saving and conservation projects and raise funds from multilateral funding agencies like Asian Development Bank (ADB).

According to the statement by BS, the two key energy projects undertaken by EESL comprise Street Light National Programme (SNLP) and Smart Meters, which result in investments of about INR 10 billion and INR 26 billion respectively in the state.

Under smart metering, EESL would install 4 million smart meters apart from 10 million pre-paid meters at the consumer end. “This is the biggest smart metering project anywhere in the world given the sheer size of the project. We would invest about Rs 26 billion towards this project and later recoup our investment in the next eight years,” said Saurabh Kumar,  Managing Director, EESL

Earlier, EESL had also raised 80 percent of the Rs 10 billion estimated investment in the street light project in UP from ADB. So far, the public sector enterprise had already replaced nearly 0.6 million conventional streetlights with LED bulbs in 11 municipal corporations in the state, including Allahabad, Aligarh, Varanasi, Meerut, Firozabad, Mathura, Jhansi, Gorakhpur, Lucknow, Kanpur, and Agra.

Under the smart metering project, EESL is looking forward to installing 0.5 million smart meters in Varanasi and Lucknow by the end of this year itself.

He added “By the time, the project is completed, we estimate that almost 1.5 million streetlights would have been replaced with LED bulbs with automatic switching systems. This would result in annual savings of about 50% in energy costs to the state power utility,”

The remaining municipal corporations in the state would be covered in coming months. For the 693 municipal councils, the Yogi Adityanath government had allowed it on a voluntary basis to seek similar projects under their jurisdiction. “So far, 80 municipal councils have applied for LED streetlight project with the state urban development department,” said Manoj Kumar Singh, UP Principal Secretary Urban Development.

Additionally, according to EESL, as many as 5, 75,000 conventional streetlights have been replaced by LEDs since September 2017 as part of the Centre’s ‘Street Light National Programme’

Other EESL projects in UP include Unnat Jyoti by Affordable LEDs for all (UJALA) and Solar Study Lamps Scheme, under which it is targeting to distribute solar study lamps to 2 million school children. Under Kisan Urja Daksh Pump Awantan Yojna, EESL is eyeing to distribute 9,000 energy efficient pumps and smart control panels to farmers.

EESL is a joint venture under the administrative control of the union ministry of power to implement power efficiency programmes. EESL aims to create market access for efficient and future-ready transformative solutions and by 2020 become a $1.5 billion (Rs 100 billion) company. It has also begun its operations in the UK, South Asia, and South-East Asia.

Meanwhile, the net energy demand in UP is wavering around 19,000 megawatts (Mw) with the spike in mercury in recent weeks necessitating power rostering in some areas.