After achieving a milestone of distributing 3 crore LED bulbs under domestic lighting scheme, Power Minister Piyush Goyal on Wednesday said the price of these lights will be brought down to Rs 44 per unit in coming days.
“We will encourage the Make In India campaign and aim to bring down the prices of LEDs to Rs 44 per unit. Earlier I had talked about it in lighter vein. But now this is the new target for us,” Mr Goyal told reporters.
The state-run Energy Efficiency Services Limited (EESL) has been able to procure LED bulbs for Rs 73 as of June, down from Rs 310 in February 2014, a reduction of over 75 per cent.
Mr Goyal also urged the representatives from the lighting industry to reduce retail prices of LED bulbs, which are still ruling as high as Rs 300.
He was speaking at an event organised by Energy Efficiency Services Limited (EESL) to mark the distribution of three crore LED bulbs under government flagship initiative, the Domestic Efficient Lighting Programme (DELP).
The scheme is running in six states — Rajasthan, Delhi, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh and Himachal Pradesh — and is rapidly expanding across all other states, an EESL press release said.
According to the statement, the three-crore bulbs distributed will result in an annual energy savings of 4 billion Kwh, capacity addition avoidance of 900 MW and cost savings of Rs 304 crore and has impacted 90 lakh consumers.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi had launched the DELP scheme in January, which will be executed across 100 cities. Through this scheme, residential consumers are provided with high quality LED bulbs given at a concessional rate of Rs 100-105 against the market price of Rs 350-450.