Eastern Railways Iconic Jamalpur Workshop To Go Solar

In its ambitious push to become a ‘Carbon Neutral Railway,’ the Eastern Railway is also leaning heavily on solar power. Coming up next is a 3.7 MWp roof top and shed solar power plant at its Jamalpur Workshop for 25 years.

The Jamalpur Workshop, or Jamalpur Locomotive Workshop was established on 8 February 1862 as the first fully-fledged railway workshop facility in India. 8 years after the first train chugged out of Thane, Maharashtra in 1854.

The school attached to the Jamalpur workshops eventually became the IR Institute of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering.

For the upcoming solar plant, a Public Private Partnership (PPP) model will be employed to develop the project and it will be completed in the present financial year itself.

According to reports, the Railways has formulated a tender with a tariff of Rs 5.43/KWh. The current tariff stands at Rs 6.7/KWh. The solar power installation will be producing more than 12,400 units of electricity every day that will help the Eastern Railways to save more than Rs 57 lakh per annum.

Solarisation of Railways – An Incomplete Work in Progress

The Indian Railways has made some of the most ambitious pledges to decarbonise, starting with the promise to be 100% electric by 2024 and net zero by 2030.  A joint study by Climate Trends and Riding Sunbeams has revealed that direct supply of solar energy to Indian Railways lines, without the need to connect via the grid, would save almost ‘seven million tons of carbon’ a year whilst also powering at least one in four train on the national network on competitive terms.

Subsequently, Satluj Jal Vidyut Nigam (SJVN) announced that it has partnered with engineering firm Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited (BHEL) and Railway Energy Management Company (REMC) Limited to heighten the development of renewable energy projects.

In January this year, the railways said that they are already successfully generating around 121.47 MW of solar power through their existing solar rooftop capacity installed in 1,094 railway stations across the country. Some 700 more stations will be solarized in the coming days. data released by South Western Railway has installed solar power panels on the rooftop of 120 stations and seven buildings that produces more than 4,656 KWp of solar energy.

The Central Railways has also said that it now has a total of 48 sites solarised. According to it, all the 48 sites will now produce 2.5 million units of green energy that will help the railways to save Rs 1.9 crore that would otherwise be spent on fuel each year.