Quality concerns are prominently raised about the LED equipment installed in the city. Frequent repairs and replacement of the bulbs and equipment cast doubts on the quality of the material used.
Ideally, an LED bulb of good quality should clock over 50,000 working hours, which easily extends to 10-12 years. But within a year of installation, the GHMC’s official statement puts the number of bulb replacement at 20,450.
The GHMC engineering staff did not conduct quality checks on the lights, relying on the assurance that maintenance would be Energy Efficiency Services Ltd (EESL)’s responsibility for the next seven years, officials say. After seven years, GHMC will inherit the system obviously dogged by a number of issues, considering the amount of maintenance that is required as of now.
The corporation will have no go other than handing over the maintenance to outsourced agencies, as its street lights wing has already been dismantled and the workers transferred to other departments.
Third parties involved
Though the present agreement is between GHMC and EESL, many other third party agencies have been involved in installation as well as maintenance. “The EESL hired IL&FS as the agency to supervise the installation, which in turn called for material and work contractors. The lights were fixed by 30 different contractors in 30 circles, and the monitoring is done by four different agencies,” says an official.
The LED street lighting should ideally use a combination of photo sensor switches which put on the lights based on the amount of ambient light, and astronomical clock, which adjusts the lighting as per the sunset and sunrise data. However, the current system uses only astronomical clock, and hence, there could be a chance of power wastage at times, the official says.
There is a master control for every few lights, which functions through radio frequency communication. All such master controls are connected to the centralised command control centres run by four different agencies each of which uses its own technology.
“There is a chance that the radio frequency communication is not working owing to obstructions. And manipulation of CCMS to show 98% glow rate also cannot be ruled out,” says the official.