Indian Railways to install rooftop solar panels on 250 trains
Indian Railways has devised a plan for installing rooftop solar panels on 250 trains, in an effort to reduce fuel costs and help the environment as well, Inhabitat.com reports.
Indian Railways is planning on reducing the fuel costs and lower its emissions in order to meet government standards by installing rooftop solar panels on 250 trains. The company is yet to announce the exact trains that will feature this new addition, but the money has already been floated for installing the systems.
The solar panels systems will be used for powering the lights and fans in the trains, with the initiative expected to provide India‘s growing renewable energy program with another boost. This is mainly expected because the solar panel trains will be used mostly on tracks that are currently unelectrified.
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This is not the first clean-energy initiative of this kind, as early this year, “7,000 railway stations across the country will be fed with solar power as per the Indian Railways mission to implement 1,000 megawatts of solar power capacity,” according to Indian Finance Minister Arun Jaitley.
These kinds of initiatives might lead to a 25% of the energy needs of Indian Railways being covered by renewable energy sources by 2025. “The Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW) has found that Indian Railways could set up 5 gigawatts of solar power capacity, through rooftop and utility-scale projects, to significantly increase its consumption of renewable energy over the next few years,” a report from the United Nations Development Program concluded. Furthermore, solar prices have been declining in the past months, which has only made the market even more appealing.
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