Indian Railways Soon to Commission 2 MW Solar Plant in Haryana

The Indian Railways (IR) is planning to commission soon in September this year its utility scale solar energy project with 2 MW of capacity at Diwana village panchayat located in Fatehabad district in the state of Haryana, says Piyush Goyal, Minister of Railways and Commerce & Industry in written reply to a question in Lok Sabha.

The Railway Minister also informed that another land based solar power plant of 50 MW at Bhilai in Chhattisgarh state is under execution.

While informing about the steps taken by his government to implement Solar and Wind energy plants on Indian Railways, Goyal said that 102.8 MW of rooftop and 4.7 MW of land based solar power plants have been commissioned.

To further proliferate solar plants, Indian Railways had planned to install solar plants of 20 GW of capacity by 2030 by utilizing its vacant land, the Minister added.

In this regard, to begin with, bids for 3 GW of solar plants on vacant railway land parcels and land parcels along the railway track have already been invited and Railways is planning to provide these solar plants by March, 2023, Goyal said.

Besides solar energy, 103.4 MW capacity of wind mill plants have been commissioned, he added.

However, most of the works have being done on developer mode by private partners, in which Railways do not have to incur capital expenditure, Goyal said.