Central Railway (CR) has undertaken several initiatives to reduce its energy consumption. On the Traction front, CR 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, CR brought down energy consumption from 77.8 Million Units in 2017-18 (Apr-Oct) to 71.2 MUs this year.
On renewable energy front, CR 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.
CR 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Likewise, in all 1424 energy extravagant conventional air-conditioners have been replaced by the energy efficient ACs including 499 ACs supplied by M/s EESL. Also, ~3000 old ceiling fans have been replaced by energy efficient, BEE Star Rated fans.
