Prayas,BEE seminar on CFLs

On Thursday,the BEE and Prayas Energy group conducted a day-long seminar among stakeholders on the successful implementation of the recently announced ‘Bachat Lamp Yojana’ scheme by the Bureau of Energy Efficiency (BEE). The scheme seeks to promote the replacement of incandes cent bulbs by much more efficient compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs) through a significant reduction in the price scheme.

Manu Malidgal,of the BEE spoke about the scheme that has been designed to bring down the cost of the CFL lights to an affordable Rs 15 per bulb through the use of the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) credits. According to Malidgal,this reduction in price is expected to increase the penetration of the CFL’s in the country. If all the 400 million light points in the country are fitted with CFL’s instead of incandescent bulbs,the savings in electricity would be about 10,000 MW,the officials from BEE pointed out.

Prayas,a not-for-profit organisation working on the energy sector has been approached by the Bureau of Energy Efficiency,Ministry of Power,Government of India to partner with them and organize the Regional Stake Holder Consultation Process for the Bachat Lamp Yojana (BLY). This consultation was held with a diverse group of stakeholders,says Soumyabrata Rahut,consultant for the Prayas Energy Group.This is a public-private partnership between the Government of India,Private sector and State level Electricity Distribution Companies (DISCOMs) would provide the framework to distribute high quality CFLs to the households at the price of incandescent bulbs. Officials from MSEDCL and CFL distributors were present. The energy efficiency projects get derailed due to bad quality lamps and hence issues like quality of bulbs was also raised.