Indian Railways plans to install rooftop solar at nearly 7000 stations nationwide

Indian Railways currently has rooftop solar installed in 1,094 of its railway stations, and is looking to add rooftop solar to 7,000 stations across the country to meet its energy needs.

Nearly 7000 railway stations are to be powered by solar energy under an ambitious project being undertaken by Indian Railways. As a result of their existing rooftop solar capacity installed at 1,094 railway stations across the country, the railways are already generating 121.47 MW of solar power.

According to media reports, the Indian Railways is working to provide rooftop solar panels to all railway stations in the country. Currently, as many as 1,094 railway stations across the country have rooftop solar panel installations.

The major ones of these include Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh (redeveloped with world-class facilities), Katra in Jammu and Kashmir, New Delhi, Old Delhi, Jaipur, Secunderabad, Kolkata, Howrah and Guwahati among others. To meet their energy needs, nearly 7,000 railway stations will be fitted with rooftop solar panels according to Indian Railway plans.

At MCF in Raebareli, a 3 MW solar power generating plant has already been established, while two pilot projects have been assigned to BHEL and to the Railway Energy Management Company Limited (REMCL) at Bina in Madhya Pradesh and Diwana in Haryana, which will generate 1.7 MW and 2 MW of solar energy respectively.

In addition to all this, a 50 MW solar power plant is being built on railway land in Bhilai so that the Indian Railways can meet their energy requirements of railway stations.

Similarly, the Railways has already partnered with the Rewa Ultra Mega Solar – a joint venture between Solar Energy Corporation of India Limited (SECI) and the Madhya Pradesh government for the purpose of obtaining solar energy to meet railway station energy needs.

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