Unnat Jyoti by Affordable LEDs for All-UJALA

Unnat Jyoti Overview

Ujala stands for ‘Unnat Jyoti by Affordable LEDs for All’ and is a government initiative for the distribution of LED bulbs at subsidized rates.

The project is also known as the LED-based Domestic Efficient Lighting Programme (DELP). It is considered to be the world’s largest non-subsidized distribution project of LED lamps. It was instigated to enhance efficiency in the usage of energy, its consumption, and savings.

UJALA promises to avail LED bulbs to every grid-connected consumer having a metered-connection at 40% of the market price. The project is a joint-initiative by Energy Efficiency Services Limited (EESL), a Public Sector Undertaking of the Government of India, under the Union Ministry of Power along with Electricity Distribution Company.

The scheme was inaugurated on 1st May 2015 by the honourable Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi. It replaced the earlier project of “Bachat Lamp Yojana”, which was implemented in the same manner to promote the use of CFL Bulbs. BLY was spearheaded by the Bureau of Energy Efficiency and aimed to distribute qualitative CFL bulbs at Rs.15 for an exchange of old incandescent lamps.

Advantages of LEDs

Before the induction of LED bulbs to the markets, nearly every household was dependent on incandescent bulbs. These incandescent bulbs are those classic light bulbs that produce light through heating the wired filament.

These consume an exponential amount of electricity to produce this much amount of light whereas nearly 90% of the energy is only used in heating the filament.

They have a short lifespan of around 1200 working hours. With all these downsides, the only reason for the popularity is its extremely cheap price.

On the other hand, Light Emitting Diodes are the more recently invented light bulbs that consume only one-tenth of the energy consumed by ordinary ones giving more light and better quality.

These have a long lifespan covering around 50,000-1, 00,000 operating hours and have very less maintenance-related hassles.

But being technologically so advanced, their market price is high, which remains the only barrier for the common citizen to avail themselves.

Objectives behind UJALA

For the above-mentioned benefits of LEDs, the Government of India aims to replace all the high energy-consuming ordinary bulbs with LEDs in phased cycles.

It targets to replace 770 million bulbs in 3 years with estimated annual energy savings of up to 105 billion kWh.

Achievements

The implementation of the scheme has been very well done which produced quite a success rate. Till the present date, UJALA has

• distributed around 367 million light bulbs,
• saved around 47,652 MN kWh per year,
• cut expenses up to 20,000 crores per year,
• Reduced 38,598,520 t Co2 emission every year.

Availability of the Bulbs

These bulbs are not to be available in any retail shops in the market. The phase-wise distribution process includes designated kiosks at specific locations of the city.

Documents to be submitted to avail the Bulbs

1. Photocopy of the most-recent electricity bill.
2. A copy of photo ID proof.
3. A copy of residential proof.
4. Advance cash in case of On-Bill financing