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The City of Tirupati, population 250,821, is located in the Chittoor district of Andhra Pradesh, India at the foothills of Eastern Ghats. Tirupati is a major economical and educational hub in the southern region of the state. The city is famous for the Venkateswara Swamy temple dedicated to Lord Venkateswara, which is located about 10 km north west of Tirupati in the hallowed Tirumala hills. One of the most important pilgrimage centers in India, the temple draws millions of pilgrims and is one of the busiest pilgrimage centers in the world. Tirupati has several additional temples and is famous for its red wooden toys, copper and brass idols. Tirupati is almost equidistant from the state capital cities of Hyderabad, Bengaluru and Chennai.

About LED City
The LED City is an expanding community of government and industry parties working to evaluate, deploy and promote LED lighting technology across the full range of municipal infrastructure to:

-- Save energy
-- Protect the environment
-- Reduce maintenance costs
-- Provide better light quality for improved visibility and safety. 

About 22 percent of electricity is used lighting. In a world with soaring energy prices based on the availability and control of fossil fuels, and with growing concern about sustainability of the environment, a revolution in lighting is long overdue.

Serious consideration has to be given to focus on a change in the lighting design system to cater to the requirements of the pedestrians, which is only getting a secondary attention with the present design practice. The motorist does neither need high lighting levels nor lighting from the tall masts with high powered lights. With LEDs we should be able to revert to provide edge, divider and lane marker lighting and provide illumination without obstruction of the trees in the pedestrian area. The lighting power requirement goes down to about a third what we are using today for lighting the street, neglecting the requirements of the pedestrian. The pedestrian area gets lit from the spill light or as a incidental fallout of the street lighting. The pedestrian area lighting is affected by the dark spots due to trees etc., when lighted with the present designs with tall poles.

"Devendra Talkies and Tilak represent two of our city's most highly trafficked roads, making proper illumination is essential," according to Shri.P.Mohan Reddy, Commissioner, Municipal Corporation of Tirupati. "With thousands of people enjoying our city each day, LED lighting provided a way to reduce costs associated with the energy use and maintenance of illuminated roadways." Tirupati temple tops and leads any other place of worship in the world in terms of the offerings from its devotees.

The scheme completed now has 72 Watt LED street lights and estimates energy savings of more than 70 percent compared to traditional sodium vapor street lighting. Tirupati Municipal Corporation estimates a monthly savings of 6,187 units of electricity, which is equivalent to 288,000 Indian Rupees annually.

More and more cities are planning to revamp their city lighting systems under the JNNURM program sponsored by the central government and it is time to provide effective lighting for the pedestrian area and without sacrificing the need of the vehicular traffic. Added advantage would be the reduction in energy demand by 50% to 60%. Our power systems also have acute peak shortage and with this change, would be benefited.

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(Source: Tirupati Municipal Corporation, Avni Energy Solutions & CREE Inc, the LED manufacturer.)

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Tirupati, the abode of Lord Venkateshwara gets
energy efficient LED street lighting.