North Central Railway generates 94 lakh units of energy using solar power

The productivity of solar plants in North Central Railway (NCR) is registering an upward trajectory by generating 94 lakh units of energy.

According to the information given by North Central Railway, comparing to generated 81 lakh units of energy using solar power during April-December 2020-21, this year 94 lakhs units of energy have been generated using solar power in the same period, an improvement of 16 per cent over last year.

It is a big leap towards a larger goal of environmental protection as solar energy is a greener source of energy, and also led to substantial savings in revenue too.

The official statement read that NCR has achieved a net revenue saving of 3.82 crores using solar power during April-December 2021.

As per the information, NCR has a total installed capacity of 11.03 MWp. While 120 kWp has been installed by the Railway, the remaining 10882.34 kWp capacity has been installed by two major Solar Power Developers (SPD) Azure and ReNew on a PPP basis.

Among the major places where rooftop solar plants have been installed are station buildings, workshops, training schools, General Managers (GM) office and Divisional Railway Manager (DRM) office buildings.

About 8000 tones of reduction in carbon footprints have been achieved by NCR using solar power during April-December.

An important parameter of the performance of solar plants is the Capacity Utilization Factor (CUF).

NCR solar panels have shown a CUF of 12.9 per cent during the said period which is considered as an appreciable performance, it added.

NCR has set an ambitious target for 2021-22 to generate the highest ever solar energy to the tune of 1.3 crore units, thereby saving about Rs 5 crores.

General Manager of NCR, Pramod Kumar has called for adopting a focussed approach for augmenting the share of solar energy in its total non-traction electrical energy consumption.

To promote solar energy and the maintenance of solar plants, many steps were taken by the zonal railway.

Under this, monitoring of solar energy generation is being done for each plant. A solar diary was also introduced to SSEs for systematic documentation and focussed monitoring of energy and other important data in a structured manner.

As per the official information, now, installation work of solar power plants of 1.86 MWp on the rooftop, 46.25 MWp on vacant lands near Railway stations and 249 MWp on vacant lands along the railway tracks falling under Golden Diagonal and Golden Quadrilateral over NCR by Railway Energy Management Company Limited (REMCL) has already been planned by the zonal railway.