Pune, a city located in western Indian state of Maharashtra, will be replacing 70,000 streetlights with LEDs, reported Times of India.

The Pune Municipal Corporation standing committee approved the lighting upgrade plan on Tuesday, wrote The Indian Express.

A private company will replace high pressure sodium vapor lights with LEDs during the period.

There are about 120,000 streetlights throughout the city, and the PMC replaced nearly 50,000 streetlights with LEDs at a cost of INR 500 million in different phases starting from 2011, said Shrikrishna Chaudhary, Superintendent Engineer of PMC.

The remaining 70,000 streetlight installations will be commissioned to a private agency, added Chaudhary.

The city is experiencing difficulties in finding a private agency to carry out the installation, its tender process was carried out three times, due to poor responses and only four applied in the process with only one being approved.

 “The private agency is empanelled with the Union government as energy saving company. Therefore, it has appointed as per the scheme of the Union government to appoint the agency that would invest capital expenditure on the project and would maintain the project for 12 years,” Chaudhary said.

The agency estimates revenues saved from installing LED lights would amount to about INR 140 million per year, based on the existing power tariff that would be paid by the PMC to the agency.

The government body will not be paying directly to the firm, but will be using an ESCO model where the company is paid in the form of savings from reduced electricity expenses after installing the LED lights.

"The civic body aims to reduce its expense on electricity. It has also decided to do away with the old system in favor of better technology. The process of streetlight replacement is underway and nearly 40% have been replaced. The rest will be changed in a year's time," said Chaudhary.

In addition, the city government is generating additional revenue by leasing 20,000 streetlight poles for advertising, which will help the civic body to generate about INR 80 million revenue.