VISAKHAPATNAM: Come April, Vizag can hope to see the last of streetlights blazing away way after the sun has risen in the sky or dark streets post sunset with the Greater Visakhapatnam Municipal Corporation (GVMC) all set to install a central control and monitoring system (CCMS) by next April to cut down on power wastage in the street lighting system. 

The system will be set up by Energy Efficiency Services Limited (EESL), a joint venture between public sector undertakings of the Union power ministry, and monitored by the AP State Energy Conservation Mission (APSECM). An MoU on the project was inked on Thursday as part of the civic body's LED street lighting and energy conservation efforts. 

Speaking on the occasion, EESL managing director Saurabh Kumar said the CCMS is the first of its kind to be used in monitoring the street lighting system of any civic body in the country. With the CCMS, all the streetlights would be switched on and off at the flick of a single switch. 

"We will feed the sunrise and sunset timings into the system to operate streetlights in order to prevent energy wastage. The main CCMS office will be set up at the GVMC premises from where EESL's staff will monitor the functioning of streetlights apart from addressing the complaints of out of order lights," Saurabh Kumar said. 

Talking about the MoU with EESL, GVMC commissioner Pravin Kumar said nearly 76,000 sodium vapour lamps in streetlights out of the total 91,775 in GVMC limits have been replaced by LED lamps as on Thursday. EESL will be solely responsible for running the LED streetlights over the next seven years. We will be able to conserve nearly 2.43 crore units per annum as against the average annual energy consumption of 3.92 crore units by the old street lighting system," the GVMC chief said. 

Meanwhile, Saurabh Kumar of EESL said they would cover the remaining streetlights by February 28 and had already repaired nearly 1200 LED lights out of 1300 LED lights that were not functioning properly. 

APSECM chief executive officer A Chandrasekhara Reddy said the initiative to install LED lights was taken up by the state government to prevent power wastage.