LED Bulb Penetration 88pc in India, Says Study

Kolkata: Energy efficiency in Indian households has touched 88 per cent with LED bulbs lighting up homes due to affordable government schemes, while more than 75 per cent of air-conditioner users and 60 per cent of refrigerator customers are using star-labelled products, a study said on Wednesday. However, only 25 per cent of Indian households are aware of the Bureau of Energy Efficiencys star labelling programme, it said.

The study by not-for-profit the Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW) also found that 77 per cent of grid users are satisfied with their electricity services.

The study is based on findings from the India Residential Energy Survey (IRES) 2020 conducted by CEEW in collaboration with the Initiative for Sustainable Energy Policy (ISEP) covering nearly 15,000 households across 152 districts in 21 states.

It is the first-ever pan-India survey on the state of energy access, consumption and energy efficiency in Indian homes.

The CEEW study also found that 97 per cent of Indian households were connected to the grid, with another 0.33 per cent exclusively relying on off-grid electricity sources such as solar home systems, solar mini-grids, and battery storage.

An estimated 2.4 per cent of the households in the country remained unelectrified, it said.

“Our focus is now going to be on quality, reliability and consumer satisfaction to increase satisfaction rates from 77 per cent to 90 per cent and even higher,” additional power secretary Sanjay Malhotra said in a statement.

“We are setting up a committee to develop a framework to rank the distribution companies. Improving satisfaction rates, and viability and sustainability of discoms is very important. State-run discoms lose almost a rupee per unit sold.. we need to improve the wherewithal of the discoms,” he said.

The study showed that consumer satisfaction in the rural areas of Bihar, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, Uttar Pradesh, and West Bengal had more than “tripled” from 23 per cent in 2015 to 73 per cent in 2020.

According to the CEEW study, Jharkhand had the lowest share of grid users billed regularly (55 per cent).

Source: ET