The Vellore Corporation is set to introduce a high-tech system to monitor and maintain streetlights.

In
the next couple of weeks, a Geographic Information System (GIS) to
monitor streetlight would be implemented as a public-private partnership
project at an estimated cost of `8 crore.

The project aims at cutting down the power consumption and improve the efficiency of monitoring and maintenance.

Corporation
Engineer A P Baskaran said the new system, among facilitating other
things, would help the Corporation in getting immediate feeedback about
the performance of the streetlights,

This would help cut down the power consumption and the electricity bills by at least 40 per cent, he added. 

The Corporation presently has around 17,726 streetlights within the city limit.

A
Coimbatore-based company had conducted a study on the wastage of
illumination, pole placement, lighting ambience and replacing the
current lighting pattern with advanced LED/CFL lighting system, covering
all parts of the city in the past two months and had  come up with a
report.

The company analysed also the lighting pattern and the
electricity consumption in the last three years, that was taken as the
baseline for the study.

This report would be validated by a third party and the project would be implemented in the next couple of weeks, Baskaran said.

“It may be completed in the next three or four months,” noted the Corporation Engineer.

Once
the project is implemented, the entire streetlights could be monitored
by a team of professionals from the company working on a contract basis
for the next 10 years.

They would be provided with vehicles and uniforms by the Corporation.

Complaints
about the street lights would be addressed instantly as the entire
street lighting could be monitored by the Corporation online.