BEE to help civic bodies improve energy efficiency

MITCON has conducted over 400 energy audits in the past. “Energy services is a Rs 24,000 crore market and has a payback of 3 years or less. The market is still evolving in India and there are bound to be failures. Business is growing at the rate of 10 per cent every year,”Mathur,referring to the failure of another Pune company Thermax which had not done well in the market previously. “The reason why Thermax did not do well was because the company had come out with this concept very early in the market and was offering its products after the energy audits. But the company has now made a comeback,” he said.

After the success of the pilot run at Mangalweda in Solapur district,Bureau of Energy Efficiency (BEE) plans to replicate the Agricultural Demand Side Management project run by MITCON in Gujarat and Haryana.” The pilot run by MITCON here was successful and we will replicate this model in other states soon,” said Mathur.

Bee is not only encouraging Energy Services Companies (ESCos) to come up with viable business models to improve energy efficiency in the industry and the public sector but is also tapping the construction sector,street lighting,water pumps,agriculture pumps sets and SMEs to drive energy efficiency,” Mathur said.

The Mangalweda project involved the energy audit of some 2,200 agriculture pumps,which were found to be inefficient. After conducting the audit,MITCON has replaced these pumps valued at about Rs 16 crore with BEE labeled energy efficient pumps free of cost. The average savings from the replacement of pumps comes to about 6 million units,Pradeep Bavadekar,MD,MITCON said. These savings will shared between the ESCo which is MITCON here and the MSEDCL (Maharashtra State Energy Distribution Company Ltd),he added. MITCON,a consultancy company has been accredited by BEE as a Certified Energy Auditor and ESCo.