The Pearl City of Hyderabad will soon be home to the world’s largest LED streetlighting project with 4.5 lakh lights retrofitted.

Energy Efficiency Services Ltd (EESL) has signed up with Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation to retrofit 4.5 lakh street lights under the Streetlighting National Project.

With this project, GHMC will surpass South Delhi Municipal Corporation (SDMC), where EESL has retrofitted approximately 2.7 lakh streetlights.

The ₹270-crore project will be implemented by EESL with no upfront cost to GHMC. The municipal Corporation will pay back EESL for the project cost through deemed savings mode, over a period of seven years.

Through the replacement, GHMC is likely to save approximately 20 crore kWh electricity annually, resulting in reduction of over 1.60 lakh tonnes of CO2 annually.

Saurabh Kumar, Managing Director of EESL, said in a statement, “It is a moment of immense pride for EESL, to collaborate with GHMC to retrofit the city’s 4.5 lakh conventional streetlights with LED-based lights, the opportunity to helm the world’s largest streetlighting project.”

GHMC has 3.5 lakh streetlight poles, which will be expanded to over 4.5 lakh by installation of 33 poles per kilometre. GHMC incurs an annual expenditure of ₹210 crore on maintenance and management of the existing conventional street light infrastructure.

Through the retrofitting drive, EESL has assured GHMC of approximately 50 per cent savings in electricity. This shall result in a monetary savings of over ₹1,200 crore to GHMC over seven years.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched 100 cities National Programme on January 5, 2015 to convert 1.34 crore conventional street and domestic lights with energy efficient LED lights, under the Streetlighting National Programme. Nationally, over 26 lakh conventional streetlights have been replaced with LED streetlights in 22 states.