India’s first green station at Manwal on the Jammu-Udhampur rail route was  inaugurated by Indian railways. Usually the tiny station faces the problem of frequent power cuts, now will be  provided by 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.

Now Jammu-Udhampur railway station’s fans and lights are running on solar electricity and the state electric supply is kept as a standby source in case solar power supply fails. Electric Load of S&T installations and one water cooler is on state electricity supply.

The next planning is to install more Solar panels for increasing backup for power supply and standalone lights for complete platform lighting for the further improvement in the system after the trials are successful.

To reduce the load of power supply some surplus fittings have been removed and energy efficient T-5 fittings, 60W fans, new exhaust fans (55 Watt) and CFLs are fixed.

“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.