Railways to use automatic lighting at stations to save energy

New Delhi: Taking another step towards energy conservation, the Indian Railways is planning to introduce automatic lighting system at its railways stations, the Ministry of Railways said in a tweet on Monday. The automatic lighting system at railways stations will control the lighting at these stations in tandem with the arrival and departure of trains. As soon as trains will arrive at the railway station, the lights of the platform will light up automatically at 100 percent capacity, and as soon as the train leaves, 50 percent lights on the stations will turn off. This innovative step will not only save energy but will also enhance energy efficiency in the functioning of the Railways, which will lead to money-saving. Railways has installed these automatic lighting systems at Jabalpur and Bhopal (MP) railways stations, which fall under the West Central Railway zone. And the Railways plans to scale up the project to cover more stations on its network.

Moving increasingly towards energy efficiency, the Railways is looking to use large tracts of land along its tracks which can be leveraged to set up solar power generation capacities. This is significant because it will help the national transporter cut down its electricity bill. It consumes 12 BU of electricity annually. The Railways plans to become a "net zero" carbon emitter by 2030. Earlier in June, the Railways also awarded a contract to RITES Limited's subsidiary REMCL for handling the tendering, installation, supervision and managing power supply from 3 GW solar power plants to be set-up on vacant Railway Land. The project will be divided into 3 phases of 1 GW each. The entire installation is expected to be completed by 2022-23.

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