The Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) has plans underway to produce 20MW of solar energy by installing solar panels on the rooftops of stations and its office buildings – a task that they believe will be completed by the end of the year 2017. While this may not be a sufficient quantity considering DMRC current consumption of power is 148MW, it would still handle several power requirements of the metro stations.
The Corporation also plans to keep tabs on real time through its web portal, on the amount of solar energy it would be generating, the amount consumed, and how much excess solar energy it would be sending back to the grid. It would also be able to track fluctuations, due to the weather conditions, in energy generation. The DMRC’s web portal is part of its plans to expand its solar energy generation and will soon be made public.
This move is highly touted and welcomed since energy accounts for about 30-40% of DMRC’s operational costs, which is about 3% of Delhi’s total energy. While the solar power will be able to meet most of the energy requirements of the ground level stations, the underground stations need about 1.2MW each for lights and other requirements. This move towards ‘green energy’ is another of DMRC’s way of making it energy efficient and hopes to drop its energy requirement further through best practices like better engineering practices, sleek design, recycling, and reusing.