Indian Railways to Go Eco-Friendly – Solar Power & Electrification on the Table

Railways is a highly power-oriented enterprise, having high energy requirements. Indian Railways in the past have been taking various measures to go solar and railways of many zones have already adopted solar power on a large scale. Guwahati is ranking high on Google search results – no not for a vacation/ holiday, but for becoming the first North Eastern railway station to run 100% on solar power. Now, the Eastern Railway has also set an ambitious plan to generate 30 MW of solar power by 2020.

The Eastern Railways has already commissioned 5.5MW rooftop solar plants and is on track to increase the capacity by another 24.5MW by 2020. Note, Howrah railway station in Kolkata is one of the busiest stations in the country and has the largest solar capacity commissioned over a single station in Indian Railways. Further, on its ec0-friendly approach, the Indian Railways has banned plastic usage, installed bio-toilets in train coaches, etc. The Indian Railways is aiming to source about 10% of electrical energy from renewable energy sources. It has plans to install 1000 MW solar power by 2020-2021. Flexible solar panels are also being used on trains.

The Indian Railways has banned single-use plastic material, with less than 50-micron thickness and is instead using terracotta-made ‘kulhads’ at stations. Plastic bottle crushing machines have also been installed at various stations. The Indian Railways is aiming at full-electrification and the Modi government has already electrified a total of 5,200 km of railway lines last year. This number increased to 37,237 route kilometers of rail lines, which is ~58% of total Indian Railways’ network, as of November.  Piyush Goyal also said that the Indian Railways will be 100% electrically run by 2023. This entails reducing the number of trains running on diesel and to use electric locomotives network in the future. Several steps have been taken to expedite the electrification of railway lines in the country.