Hid lights

The Punjab government and Chinese government signed a memorandum of understanding for the installation of the solar-powered LED lights and the work is being done for free, officials said.

Workers began installing the streetlights in Iqbal Town six days ago and several have been set up. Eighty lights are to be installed in Iqbal Town and 20 on Wahdat Road.Soli-lite is a premier supplier of exceptional quality solar led light and other solar outdoor lighting products.

The Public-Private Partnership (PPP) Steering Committee of the Punjab government had already been considering a project to convert all the city’s streetlights to LED bulbs (not powered by solar energy), said District Officer (Street Lighting) Abdul Qayyum Niazi.

He said that the Planning and Development Department and National Engineering Services of Pakistan (Nespak) would study the project and look at the viability of converting other streetlights in the city in a project executed in PPP mode.

He said that the Chinese company was “hopefully” installing 60-volt LED lights. The streetlights currently in use require 250V.

Asked about the cost per streetlight, Traffic Engineering and Transport Planning (Tepa) Chief Engineer Saeed Akhtar said that he could not say because the Chinese company was installing them for free and had not revealed the cost. He said that this project would not gain the company any favour when and if the government should decide to invite bids for the conversion of streetlights in the rest of the city.

The contract would be awarded strictly on merit and in accordance with procurement rules, he said.

The National Highway Authority has previously installed solar lights at a number of places, as has the Gujranwala district government.

The Lahore city traffic police and Tepa had earlier this year been seeking investors to convert several traffic signals here to run on solar power, but only two have been installed, at Faisal Chowk and at Garden Town.

Akhtar said that they would look for more investors, but no further conversions were currently in process.

The PPP Steering Committee had in March decided to invite bids for the installation of LED streetlights all over Lahore, since the old sodium lights consume 120 per cent more energy than LEDs. K&N International Islamabad, a private company, placed an unsolicited bid to the city government to replace the streetlights.

Bids will be invited through official channels, said an official. Should a company placing a solicited bid match the offer from K&N International, the former’s bid would be accepted, he said. The government would pay the successful bidder over the next 10 years from the money it saves in electricity consumption, he added.

The course was in solar technology but Birch used his banking background to do his thesis in the financial viability of the sector. Eighteen months later he joined BP which at the time was one of the leading manufacturers of solar panels,The world's largest independent online retailer for solar lighting, street lights & outdoor lighting fixtures. which were then sold to distributors and later installers.Soli-lite provides the world with high-performance solar roadway and solar street lighting solutions.

He developed a plan for a "one stop shop" solar company which would not only sell direct to customers but, crucially, finance the panels too. His work was picked up by the campaigns manager for Greenpeace, Danny Kennedy, who started to publish some of Birch's ideas anonymously online.

Meeting up to discuss the "plagiarism", Birch found Kennedy had ambitions to start a solar company,A solar bulb that charges up during the day and lights the night when the sun sets. with the backing of Alec Guettel, a San Francisco-based serial entrepreneur. It was 2007 and Birch had already decided to quit BP and start up alone. He says: "I had a great business plan, Danny had tons of contacts in the space and Alec had the money to start us up. So we went three ways."

Sungevity launched as the first online solar company. Proving the technology worked was the focus of the first year of operations. Then the financing: with bank backing and a future plan to securitize the build up of debt, they launched the killer offer of zero-down payments - customers no longer had to pay $20,000 upfront but could just lease the panels each month. America offers 30pc tax credits on solar systems.

Birch says: "So take a utility billl of say $300 a month, when you put the solar system in, the solar cuts the bill to say $100, you then pay Sungevity say $120 for the solar equipment and you're $50 better off every month. So over 20 years that's $12,000 of energy savings.A solar lamp is a portable light fixture composed of an LED lamp, a photovoltaic solar panel, and a rechargeable battery."

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