Indian Railways Set to Operate on 100 Percent RE in Next 10 years: Piyush Goyal

Indian Railways has announced that it strategies to become the world’s initial 100% ‘green’ railway network in 10 years’ time. The sector is the largest electricity consumer, with 2.4% of total consumption, and the third largest high-speed diesel user, with 2.6 billion liters consumed yearly.

The striving plan is an extension of Indian Railways’ bid to develop 1 GW of solar energy generation capacity this financial year – and meet 10% of its energy demand from renewables – and to hit the 5 GW capacity mark by 2025.

Declaring the 100% clean energy determination, Piyush Goyal believed Indian Railways plans to install 1 GW of solar and 200 MW of wind power plants across its national estate. The rail operator has by now installed 88 MW of solar capacity and 103 MW of wind facilities.

“Indian Railways have already provided solar panels on [the] rooftop of 19 narrow gauge coaches and 40 broad gauge, non-air conditioned coaches which are presently in service,” held Goyal in a written reply to parliament.

“Also, rooftop solar panels have been provided on 50 goods guard brake vans to supply electricity for [a] fan, light and a charging point for the guards,” he further added.

Carriage limitation

The minister, though, emphasized constraints on installing panels on top of train coaches. “The weight of solar panels on coach rooftops is an additional constraint,” held Goyal. “Hence, the provision of solar panels on [the] rooftop of train coaches is presently under [an] experimental stage and hence not considered for installation on all train coaches.”

Power output from panels on moving trains is affected by frequent changes in direction and shadows cast by trees and trackside buildings, he added.

Indian Railways plans to develop 30 GW of solar generation capacity on some of its 51,000 hectares of vacant land.

In its Decarbonizing Indian Railways report in 2017, Council on Energy, Environment & Water specified that Indian Railways could install up to 5 GW of generation capacity by 2025, with about 1.1 GW from rooftop projects and 3.9 GW from utility scale assets. That would deliver a quarter of the rail operator’s electricity from renewables.