Solar power helps Northeast Frontier Railway save electricity bill of over Rs. 3 crore

Solar power has helped Northeast Frontier Railway (NFR) save Rs. 3 crore of electricity bills in a year giving a boost to Indian Railways' efforts to reduce carbon emissions.

The NFR on Saturday said the annual savings was achieved following the commissioning of solar power plants with the capacity to produce 3893.233 KW on the rooftop of various buildings.

"This resulted in the achievement towards annual savings of Rs. 3 crores from the yield of 4 million units (KWh) of electrical energy generation by harnessing solar energy," NFR Chief public relations officer, Subhanan Chanda said in a statement on the occasion of World Environment Day on Saturday.

The solar power plants have been installed as part of Indian Railways' vision to achieve zero net carbon emission by 2030. It has so far installed about 114 MW of solar rooftop plants in over 1,000 stations and 400 service buildings across the country.

Headquartered at Maligaon in Guwahati, NFR covers the entire Northeast, West Bengal and parts of Bihar.

"We have achieved a 73 per cent increase in installation of renewable energy sources and 25.83 per cent increase in renewable energy generation during 2020-21 in comparison to the corresponding year," Chanda said.

Solar power plants have already been commissioned on the rooftop of several buildings under the Katihar division (Bihar), Alipurduar division (Bengal), Rangiya division (Assam), Guwahati sub-division, Lumding division, Tinsukia division, Dibrugarh and New Bongaigaon workshops, Guwahati sick lines, besides others.

The NFR has also switched over to LED lights in all stations and all other installations and buildings during 2014 and 2020. All residential quarters (about 5 lakhs quarters) have also been converted to LED by May 2020 to save electricity, Chanda said.