EESL to invest Rs 36 bn in UP, to raise funds form Asian Development Bank

Earlier, EESL had also raised 80% of the Rs 10 billion estimated investment in the street light project in UP from ADB

Energy Efficiency Services Limited (EESL) will invest close to Rs 36 billion in Uttar Pradesh under various power saving and conservation projects and raise funds from multilateral funding agencies like Asian Development Bank (ADB).

The two key energy projects undertaken by EESL comprise street light national programme (SNLP) and smart meters, which entail investment of about Rs 10 billion and Rs 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,” EESL managing director Saurabh Kumar told Business Standard.

Earlier, EESL had also raised 80 per cent 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 at installing 0.5 million smart meters in Varanasi and Lucknow by December itself.

“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,” he informed.

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 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,” UP principal secretary urban development Manoj Kumar Singh said.

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 of 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 creating 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 hovering around 19,000 megawatt (Mw) with the spike in mercury in recent weeks necessitating power rostering in some areas.