Bhubaneswar: Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC) has undertaken deployed 14 teams of electrical contractors assisted by 4 assistant engineers/junior engineers and 8 technicians from BMC Engineering Wing to restore streetlights by Monday.
Currently the city has approximately 60,000 LED street lights and approximately 50,000 street light poles (including Cesu poles). While 40,000 poles are with single street light, 10,000 median poles for street lights are with double lights (a single pole holding two lights on two sides). However, while BMC has its own 15,000 street light poles in the city, other street lights are mounted on poles of Central Electricity Supply Utility (Cesu), the power distribution company for the central Odisha districts.
The civic body is hopeful that the pre-cyclone condition of the street lights could be achieved by Monday. Four electrical engineers from an outside agency have also been deployed for the street light restoration work.
The severe cyclonic storm, with a wind speed of more than 200 kmph, devastated the entire city uprooting more than 50 per cent of trees and severe damage to over 70 per cent of the green cover, the adjacent streetlight network and the poles also got affected.
‘’The exact figure of the damages to street lights will be known once the 14 teams submit their report. Once the report is placed, we will engage two private players associated with BMC in the LED street light fitting work across the city, so that the damaged lights will be in place on war footing, most probably by Monday,’’ said a senior BMC engineer.
However, a preliminary report suggests that out of 60,000 LED street lights nearly 70 per cent are intact. Less than 1,500 poles might be damaged during the natural calamity.
It can be mentioned here that the Temple City has revolutionised the concept of street lighting with LED lights. Not only it helps in giving adequate light, but the civic body has also been able to save a fortune as the LED lights consume much lesser power than sodium vapour lights.