Daylight lighting
- Hueiyen Lanpao Editorial :: July 11 , 2013 -

street lamps have been kept switched on during daytime at several places in Imphal :: Pix - Hueiyen Lanpao

"Conserve Electric Energy: A Unit of Electric Energy Saved is a Unit of Electric Energy Generated."

This is a 'meaningful' slogan put up on the website of the Electricity Department, Government of Manipur.

But how and what the Department itself has been doing to conserve and save electric energy in this perpetually energy-starved State?

This is a question that public need to ask the Department in the light of the report that street lamps installed at different parts of the State, more particularly in the Imphal Municipal Areas, are kept switched on even during daytime, thus, resulting in loss of not only the precious energy but also huge revenue that should have been accrued to the State exchequer.

Just to get an idea about how much energy is lost from the negligence of Department, whose Field Officers are nowhere to be seen on duty in the field, let's do some simple arithmetic.

Supposing, if a street lamp consumes 1000 watts of electricity in an hour and it runs for 2 hours every day, then, for a road of 2-km length with 2 lights fixed on a single post at 10 metre centre to centre distance, 400 lights would be surely in place. This means that 2 KWh X 400 = 800 KWh would be wasted in the area every day.

Keeping aside the question of whether a State like Manipur could afford to waste so much energy by keeping the street lights on during the day when natural light is available, such energy wastage is totally uncalled for and something must be done to stop it at once.

As a matter of fact, the problem of wastage of electricity from lack of proper street light management system is not something that is being experienced in Manipur alone.

The problem is there everywhere and efforts are being made to find out ways and means to minimize the electrical energy waste on the streets including in our own State Government.

Recently, people have started seeing the Electricity Department replacing the conventional street lightings along some portion of the roads in the capital Imphal by the energy-efficient Light Emitting Diode (LED) bulbs and solar panels. These are definitely in the right direction.

But taking into consideration of the fact that the Field Officers of the Department are playing truant from performing their assigned duty of switching off the street lights during day time, the Department would need to look beyond LED bulbs and solar panels.

With rise in the demand for energy and the decline in its supply, today product manufacturers and designers are come up with various sustainable alternatives to help in saving energy as well.

For instance, the State Electricity Department could think of the option for installing 'automatic timer devices' in the street lights which would switch them off automatically during day time.

Or, better still, it can think of equipping the street lamps with motion sensors to cut down power consumption when there are no people or vehicle moving around near them.

But all these would come down to huge investment and one may question from where the money would come from.

Our answer is simple, by collecting bill and surcharge over it from the Electricity Department itself for wasting so much energy on the streets all these years.