India gets first green railway station

NEW DELHI: Railways has inaugurated India's first green station at Manwal on the Jammu-Udhampur rail route. With the tiny station facing frequent power cuts, it has been a provided a supply of solar power. "A request was made to J&K SEB for providing reliable electric power supply to this station...it was planned to generate onsite renewable energy through solar panels,” said A S Negi, spokesperson, Northern Railway.

Sources said that now station lighting and fans are working on solar power. The state electric supply is a standby source, which can be used in case of any failure of solar system. Electric Load of S&T installations and one water cooler is on state electric supply. Additional Solar panels for increasing backup for power supply and standalone lights for complete platform lighting are planned to be provided for further improvement in the system after the trials are successful.

To reduce the existing load at the small station, some surplus fittings have been removed and energy efficient T-5 fittings, 60W fans, new exhaust fans (55 Watt) and CFLs have installed.

"We have used 28 solar panels (Each 12V, 70W) have been used in two groups of 14 panels each," said Negi.

"Station building load has been segregated in two portions. Each portion is being fed by one group of solar panels. The complete work has been done departmentally by arranging solar panels from Kapurthala rail coach factory and Solar charge controllers have been purchased from market. All wiring, installation, commissioning has been done departmentally without any outside assistance," he said.