Students to be roped in for drive to save power

The Delhi government will rope in 50,000 school-goers for its ambitious campaign to encourage power saving in city households.

The “Best Energy Saver Competition” will target students of Class 5 to Class 9. Each student will get an energy saving card, a booklet consisting of simple power saving tips, and a format for recording monthly energy consumption in households.

“These children will follow the tips, save and compare the savings with the previous month. A comparison will be made between the number of units saved in a given time frame. The students achieving maximum energy saving will be suitably rewarded,” the power department said in a communication to the directorate of education (DoE) last month.

“It is requested to issue an official order to all concerned school principals to extend their cooperation for organising this programme in their school without any expenditure to the government exchequer,” the communication said.

The exercise is meant to habituate children to save electricity from their childhood days, according to the government. The DoE has recently issued a circular asking schools to participate in the power saving campaign. The programme is likely to be launched by deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia.

The energy conservation project is being implemented by the Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Management Centre, department of power, in collaboration with Green Energy Solutions.

The Andhra Pradesh government has been running a similar campaign to build a school culture of energy conservation.

The Aam Aadmi Party government gives power subsidy of 50 per cent for monthly consumption up to 400KWh. Delhi’s average consumption is below 200KWh, thus, allowing comfortable use of a number of electrical appliances.