Around 94 Lakh Units Of Energy Generated By North Central Railway Using Solar Power

The solar plant productivity in North Central Railway is witnessing an upward trend trajectory by generating the output of 94 lakh units of energy.

As per the information by North Central Railway, this year, around 94 lakhs of energy units have been developed with the help of solar power as compared to the previous April-December period, which generated around 81 lakhs of energy units. This year, it showed an improvement of 16% over the last year. It is known to be a huge step towards the more prominent goal of environmental protection. Solar energy is a source of clean and green energy that will lead to exponential savings in revenue also.

However, the official statement offered insights on the net revenue achieved by NCR in April December 2021 period. It reads a net savings of 3.82 crores in revenue with the help of solar power during the same period.

Also, according to the official information, the NCR has installed 11.03 MWp in total. On the other hand, 120 kWp capacity is installed by railway, and the remaining capacity, 10882.34 kWp capacity, is installed by two major solar power companies ReNew and Solar Power Developers (SPD) on the PPP basis.

Among the major places undergoing rooftop solar plant installation include Divisional Railway Manager (DRM) office, general manager (GM) office, training schools, workshop stations, buildings, and others.

There are around 8,000 tonnes of reduction in carbon footprints with the help of solar power achieved by NCR during the tenure April to December.

However, an important parameter of solar plant performance is the capacity utilization factor (CFU). The solar panels installed by NCR hold the CFU of 12.9% during the mentioned period, which is an exceptional performance as per the official.

Also, NCR has set a target for the assessment period 2021 and incurred the highest ever solar energy with 1.3 crore units tuned, thereby saving around five crore rupees.

Pramod Kumar Das, the General Manager of NCR, asked to get a focused approach for or increasing the share of solar energy in its non-all-around traction electrical energy consumption.

In order to encourage solar energy and associated maintenance of solar plants, several initiatives were taken by the zonal railway.

However, proper monitoring for the solar energy generation is undertaken for each plant, and thereby a solar dairy was also established for focused monitoring and systematic documentation of energy along with other vital structured data.

Also, according to the official information, installation of solar power plants with 1.86 MWp capacity on the rooftop along with 46.25 MWp on vacant land and 249 MWp on vacant land along the railway tracks falling under the golden diagonal and golden quadrilateral over Railway Energy Management Company Limited NCR was planned by zonal railway.