Express News Service By

HYDERABAD:Visakhapatnam Port Trust(VPT), one of the fastest growing major ports in the country, would be the most energy- efficient port in the country.

The VPT management is planning to complete LED lighting of the port area before the proposed visit of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Visakhapatnam Port in the month of February.

Chairman of Visakhapatnam Port Trust MT Krishna Babu asked energy secretary Ajay Jain to prepare a Detailed Project Report(DPR) in coordination with Energy Efficiency Services Limited (EESL)for installing around 3,000 number of 120 Watt LED streetlights in place of existing 250 Watt High Pressure Sodium Vapour (HPSV) lamps apart from installing 9 Watt LED bulbs in the administrative offices and other places in the port area.

In order to speed up the project work, the State Energy Conservation Mission (SECM) is contemplating organising a meeting with the Chairman of VPT, Managing Director of EESL, Saurabh Kumar, officials of SECM, GVMC commissioner Praveen Kumar and officials of various organisations on October 30 in Visakhapatnam. The officials are likely to take a final call on the project during the meeting.

Visakhapatnam Port has three harbours - the outer harbour, inner harbour and the fishing harbour. The outer harbour has six berths capable of handling vessels with a draft up to 17 m while the smaller inner harbour has 18 berths that are Panamax compatible.

Visakhapatnam Port is undergoing a modernisation and expansion programme aimed at increasing its capacity to 130 million tonnes by 2016-17, entailing an investment of Rs 13,000 crore. Keeping all this in mind, the VPT management has decided to adopt energy-efficiency initiative in the port area.

Ajay Jain, who is also the vice-chairman of SECM, on Sunday said Efficient Street Lighting Programme undertaken by the Greater Visakhapatnam Municipal Corporation (GVMC) with the support of EESL, had yielded excellent results by which GVMC is saving around 40 to 45 per cent of energy.

“With VPT opting for energy efficiency methods, it could also save a considerable amount of energy,” he said.

Krishna Babu, in his letter, stated that during his recent visit to Delhi for a high-level meeting of shipping & surface transport ministry, the top brass of officials of various ministries had acknowledged the work of AP government in implementation of Energy efficient Street Lighting programme in the entire GVMC area, which had received widespread appreciation around the globe.

Ajay Jain further stated that the GVMC LED street lighting project taken up within a short span of time in the splendid recovery path after Hudhud cyclone has gained global attention and recognition from several international agencies working on energy efficiency.

According to him, the Bureau of Energy Efficiency(BEE) and EESL are evincing interest to conduct an international event called ‘Global Energy Efficiency Summit-2015’ in Visakhapatnam from December 17 to 19.

“Chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu has accorded his consent to conduct the summit at Visakhapatnam and directed officials to put all out efforts to attract even International energy efficiency agencies from different countries,” he said.

According to Ajay Jain, Chief Secretary IYR Krishna Rao, who is also the chairman of SECM, had requested union power ministry to invite top level global experts in the field of Energy Efficiency apart from leading international financial institutions such as World Bank (WB), Asian Development Bank (ADB), JICA, International Energy Agency (IEA), KFW & GIZ from Germany.

64L LED BULBs GIVEN AWAY

The Domestic Efficient Lighting Programme (DELP), which is the flagship programme of AP government on the energy-efficiency front, is under implementation in Krishna, Vizianagaram and Visakhapatnam districts. Phase-II programme is scheduled to be launched in Chittoor district on October 27. So far, about 64 lakh LED bulbs have been distributed under this programme cumulatively in the entire state.