KOCHI: Now you are not going to have to throw away the many CFL bulbs at your home or your office but still see your electricity bill get halved. The National Service Scheme (NSS) technical cell volunteers in Kochi, have started a programme where they go to households to collect faulty, CFL bulbs and convert them into LED bulbs.
The students will initially launch the project at Kuthiravattam Mental Hospital and will then extend it to the households in the whole district. The NSS unit of the JDT Islam Polytechnic College, Vellimadukunnu, has initiated the project and its members will be training the NSS volunteers in the technical cell to explore the technology to carry out the project in the district.
“After offering training to the NSS volunteers, each of the NSS units in the nine engineering and polytechnic colleges in the district will carry out the work on their college premises. They will collect one CFL bulb from each household and return 16 volt LED bulbs in the CFL bulb’s body. Interested residents in the district will be given training in the technology to equip themselves in converting the dead CFL bulbs at their homes to LEDs and thereby to prompt them to save energy,” points out district NSS activities coordinator Arshad T K, a student of JDT Polytechnic.
“We have designed a circuit for making LED bulbs from CFL and have already transformed around 30 CFL bulbs at the college. Our circuit board incorporates certain components in the used CFL bulb and certain new components required for an LED bulb to make the energy-efficient LEDs. Only an amount of around Rs 25 is required for each bulb as the reuse of CFL bulb cases reduces the cost,” says Ajal K P, a NSS volunteer who first explored the technology and imparted training to other students.
“We will launch the project by replacing the bulbs at the Mental Hospital with 16 volt LED bulbs in January. We have already started collecting the CFL bulb cases for making LED bulbs for the hospital and will carry out the work once we get information on the required number of bulbs from the hospital store-keeper. The District Collector who visited our NSS camp being held at Government Medical College to repair the health infrastructure there has also offered full support for our initiative,” says Arshad.
We will launch the project by replacing the bulbs at the Kozhikode Mental Hospital with 16 volt LED bulbs in January
