New Delhi
The continuous efforts of Ministry of Railways and Zonal Railways to embrace various energy efficient technologies and energy conservation measures had resulted in bagging 27 National Energy Conservation Awards (NECA) this year, highest ever by Railways. These awards are given annually by Bureau of Energy Efficiency (BEE) which is under aegis of Ministry of Power, Government of India to aware people about the importance of energy as well as conserving the energy by using energy efficient equipments & systems and for encouraging energy conservations in various energy intensive sectors.
This year a total of 156 awardees were selected out of 921 applications in various categories.
These awards were given in 22 major category (like Railways, hospitals, office buildings, industry, power, plant etc.) covering 53 different subsectors of large and medium scale industries mainly on the basis of improvement in specific energy and energy conservation initiatives based on recommendations of an Award Evaluation Committee under Bureau of Energy Efficiency (BEE). Achieving such a stupendous feet at national level by Indian Railways has been possible under the guidance and directions of Hon’ble Minister of Railways, Suresh Prabhu who has identified energy conservation efforts as one of the key focus area and was instrumental in enforcing such measures through slew of policy directions from the Apex level.
Electrical Energy Management Directorate of Ministry of Railways has enunciated a number of policies for implementation by Zonal Railways for reducing the energy intensity and electricity consumption. These includes
- Installation of 100% LED lights at all Railway buildings & installations.
- Using of 3 phase energy efficient locomotives.
- Net zero energy building concept for new Railway stations
- Use of BEE Star rated equipments in Railway applications
- Energy audits of large load centres, to assess demand profile and actual end use to map energy consumption pattern
- Implementation of energy efficiency related works with Energy Efficiency Services Limited (EESL) over Railways
These efforts of Indian Railways has resulted in electricity saving of 202 million units in traction segment(i.e., 1.5 % of traction consumption) and also saving 45 million units of electricity in non-traction segment(this is 1.8% of non-traction consumption) despite of increase in connected load by twelve per cent for new amenities. This effort of Railways has resulted in saving of about 40 MW avoided power generation capacity.
Among all the zonal railways, South Central Railway has bagged maximum of nine Awards for 2015-16, including the first Prize in Zonal Railways, Railway Workshops and Office Building (Greater than 10 lakh kWh Unit/Year)Sectors. This has been possible by implementing various energy efficient technologies & energy conservation measures on war footing by South Central Railway.
The category wise distribution of these 27 awards as received by Indian Railways under NECA-2016 are: Zonal Railways -4, Railway Stations -8, Railway workshop-3, and in General categories i.e., office buildings, Institution buildings and hospitals -12.
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