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BESCOM and street lights

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Power
EVERYBODY: Street lights!

I get complaints from public that street lights are burning in the day and BESCOM should switch them off. I wish I could! 

Street lights do NOT come under the control of BESCOM! street lights are owned by the local bodies, i.e. either the corporation, or Municipality or town panchayat or gram panchayat! BESCOM's role is to provide power to this local bodies for street lights. It is same as BESCOM gives power to anybody's home for lighting. 

As much as BESCOM cannot go and tell a consumer to switch of the light in the portico, BESCOM cannot tell the local bodies to switch of the street lights, as they are also like other consumers and they pay for it. But, yes, many of the corporations are going for automatic switches and they are doing their best to ensure lights are not on during day time.

From BESCOM side, we can always inform BBMP or other local bodies if anybody brings it to our notice. I hope the public appreciate our position. Thanks and regards.

Above is the extract  from the FB post that Mr Manivannan has put up recently. This explains why BESCOM is not worried about streetlights alight even during the day nor are they worried about what type of street light is used where.

As we all know the power situation is very bad in Karnataka and we have to borrow power from other states every year. This makes power saving a very important part of our everyday lives. However in the area I stay and again in many parts of bangalore there is no sense in how street lights have been put up. There is 30 ft road in front of my home and they recently replaced the tubelights with vapour lamps..this was totally unwanted but the corportor felt generous after elections and did this..the same is being done on 10 ft wide roads too..these vaour lamps consume a lot power and that much of light is unwanted too..people will need thicker curtains to block the unwanted bright light!

So important questions crop up on this:

What is the criteria to decide which light is optimal for a given road width?

Is there a criteria to decide how to light up commercial areas and residences?

Is there any costing analysis done on the usage of different type of lights?

There was another article in the press recently that authorities would single out heavy users of electricity and work with them to reduce usage..that was for the general public. But there is a bigger drain in energy resources with these unwanted street lights(vapour lamps) everywhere around the city..

what can be done about this?

 

 

Comments

mohd jafar sagar's picture

hescom related problems & solutions providing

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179 users have liked.


Respected sir,

I mohd.jafar sagar of dandeli,i am informing you that,the above said
subject ,in hescom dandeli i am trying to LT-50hp power connection at
industrial estate ambewadi dandeli, since four months.but no result was
found.
The officer said their is no power remaining & all installed transformer is
fully loaded.he said if you want power connection you will install transformer &
all axesaries like pcc\rcc poles,conducters & servicing,connecting charges with your own costs.
it is not possible to me.If you take intrest on my request,it is possible & it is grateful.    

So that i am requesting to you sir,please ignore my request  & grant the
50hp power connection.

kindly requesting to you once again sir,please do the needful & oblige,
I hope you will response my humbly request as soon as possible sir.

Thanking you sir,


Regards.
mohd jafar sagar
c/o sagar industries
plot no spl19&19A
industrial estate
ambewadi dandeli-581325
dist-karwar,taluq-haliyal.
9845282725

murali772's picture

PRAJA as a grievance redressal forum

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172 users have liked.

It's a pity such matters are being addressed to PRAJA.

If power supply is not being made available to a unit in an industrial estate, apparently, there is something amiss. For whatever it's worth, I'll send a mail to HESCOM MD bringing the matter to his attention.

 

Muralidhar Rao
srinidhi's picture

Grid Failures and Induction Lighting

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Karnataka was not affected by the recent North Indian grid failure..howerver its not far off that with the faliure of monsoon we will have a much bigger crisis looming large..

Its high time we start looking at conservation..UP in June announced that all shops and malls close by 7 to conserve power..it sounded funny then..however after the grid colapse it was more like a desparate attempt in doing something..which finally did not work!

Was planning to come up with some thoughts on conservation..one of the alternates that have comeup recently for the vapor lamps used for street lighting is Induction lighting..below is a chart on comparison of Induction lamps..

Induction lighting also scores better over LED lighting in cost (1/3 rd ) as well as the lumens count..LED light is narrow and not suitable for street lighting..

Hence its ideal replacement for the power hogging street lights and mall lighting..

It would be interesting if BESCOM can take some initiatives in starting to use these Induction lights..

rs's picture

Energy saving measures.

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What surprises me to a certain extent is that basic energy saving measures - which are commonplace in Europe, for example, are not utilized here. For example, for most buildings, the passages and common areas can have motion sensitive lights - so that the lights arent running all the time. And all bathrooms in public buildings can also have this - for the exhaust fans as well. This will cut down on unnecessary usage of electricity as well as noise pollution from the fans.

People and companies are willing to spend lakhs of rupees on inverters and generators. Inverters, for one, save no power to the grid - in fact, they are an additional burden as not all the energy stored is used and perhaps some amount gets wasted. Generators have addtional concerns like noise and air pollution.

A google search revealed that motion sensitive ligths are quite easily available.

http://www.ebay.in/sch/Home-Security-Systems-/48636/i.html?_nkw=pir+sensor

http://www.commonfloor.com/articles/how-to-cut-your-community-electricity-costs-1267.html

It seems like Mr Manivannan is very progressive and keen on improving BESCOM. Perhaps the government or BESCOM could make strong recommendations towards the use of energy saving devices. As last weeks outages showed - there is a serious crisis in this country which is being neglected to a certain extent owing to short term political interests. 

Ramesh

vijay8204's picture

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Vasanthkumar Mysoremath's picture

Switch off alternate street light/Bill Board bulbs after 10 PM

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Fact: A 40 vat bulb burning for 24 hours consumes one unit of electricity. After 10 PM, citizens settle down at their homes and most of the city streets will be empty except for street dogs.  Depending upon the bulbs (sodium vapor/halid metalic) being used in street lights, we can envisage lot of saving of electricity by simply switching off alternate bulbs of street lights. There appears to be no necessity to light up the streets with bright lights with no purpose being served, particularly in large cities / towns.

Secondly, on many National and State Highways, advertisement bill boards of enormous sizes have been lit up with bright lights.  This is a criminal waste of energy, whatever may be the source of supply.  Argument that we pay for it, is passe.  It is time to be more realistic in our usage of scarce energy since these bill boards have limited class action purpose but they are using electricity that belongs to everybody. .   

At the present cost, 1 MW power generation costs Rs.1000 crores.  The slogan is - one unit saved is equal to 3 units generated. 

There are methods and technology available for adopting this simple suggestion.  Authorities must have the will to adopt such power saving suggestions. 

Any takers?

Naveen's picture

Street lighting during nights

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Recently, there was news about an invention that could sense motion on the streets & switch lights on automatically when motion is detected, & switch them off when there wasn't any movement.

For India, with so many social problems, thefts, rapes, etc, I think it may not be practicable to keep street lights off at night even with such devices since it would worsen these problems & ways would be found to go around it to ensure darkness whilst illegal activities take place under cover of darkness.

The only way to reduce power consumption is to use more efficient lighting methods that conserve power like Induction lighting or LED lights.

Also, if alternate street lights have to be kept lit, it would involve duplication of wiring or more extensive wiring. There could be ways to circumvent this problem - say, by using solar lamps alternately that can be switched off at night, whilst electric lamps at other set of alternate lamp posts continue to burn all through the night. These could be of the power-saving type which would bring down power consumption considerably.

Vasanthkumar Mysoremath's picture

Switch off ALTERNATE STREET/BILL BOARDS light only

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@ Naveen

My post may pl be read again -  I have not stated that all street lights must be switched Switching off alternate street lights would result in saving of scarce electricity, so that streets will have enough light for people who move around at that time.  Another thing crimes are committed even in broad day light and not necessarily under the cover of darkness.  

I have also talked about switching off bright lights of Bill Boards after 10 PM.  Some lights of Bill Boards in Bengaluru have been found to be burning even during day time.

Vasanthkumar Mysoremath

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