Central Railway observes National Energy Conservation Day.

24 December 2019, Pune- Central Railway observed National Energy Conservation Day with a Seminar on Energy Conservation on the concluding day of the Energy Conservation Week on 23.12.2019.

Shri Sanjeev Mittal, General Manager, Central Railway presided over the Seminar. The General Manager also released a pamphlet on Energy Conservation on the occasion.

Shri S P Vavre, Principal Chief Electrical Engineer and other Principal Heads of Departments also participated in the Seminar.

Energy Conservation Week was observed by all the Divisions and Workshops on Central Railway to mark the National Energy Conservation Day.

In the seminar, the trend of energy consumption was reviewed critically and, the ways and means to minimize both the consumption and the bill in the face of ever increasing traffic on electric traction and passenger amenities like passenger lifts and escalators, improvement in illumination level of stations and, ever increasing electricity tariff.

On the Traction front, Central Railway has managed to contain the energy consumption despite having taken over several trains on Electric Traction after electrification of Miraj-Kolhapur and Pune-Shindawane sections and replacing Power Cars by Head On Generation (HOG). On non-traction front, Central Railway has managed to bring down energy consumption from 77.8 Million Units in 2017-18 (Apr-Oct) to 71.2 MUs this year.

On renewable energy front, Central Railway has commissioned rooftop solar plants aggregating 3.7 MW so far and, has entered into power purchase agreement for 9.9 MW in June this year. Land Based Solar Plants totalling 40 MWp have been proposed on Nagpur and Solapur Divisions. Central Railway has gone for Wind Power through Open Access in a big way and, 50.4 MW and 6 MW Wind Mills have been installed in Sangli.

The Regenerative Braking in 3-Phase Locos has yielded a saving of 52 MUs during 2018-19 and 73 MUs in 2019-20. Likewise, the 3-Phase Electric Multiple Units have been regenerating energy during braking and yielding a saving as high as 16 MUs a month, ie, ~112 MUs this year. The energy regenerated as such is equivalent to a saving of 130795 Tonnes of CO2, ie, Greenhouse Gases or Carbon Footprint. The HOG which has been introduced in 31 trains has yielded a saving of about 295 kilo-Litres of Diesel.

In order to reduce the consumption of electricity on Non-Traction front, energy efficient equipment like LED luminaires have been used in all the 2650 service buildings, 432 stations and 31786 staff quarters. Likewise, in all 1424 energy extravagant conventional air-conditioners have been replaced by the energy efficient ACs including 499 ACs supplied by M/s EESL. Also, ~3000 old ceiling fans have been replaced by energy efficient, BEE Star Rated fans.

In addition to the Seminar, an exhibition of energy efficient appliances was also organised in which some market leaders participated with their latest products such as LED lamps, inverter ACs, geysers etc.