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India is Rolling Out Trains With Solar-powered Coaches That'll Save Thousands of Litres of Diesel (qz.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: India's massive diesel-guzzling railway network is getting serious about its experiments with solar. On July 14, Indian Railways rolled out its first train with rooftop solar panels that power the lights, fans, and information display systems inside passenger coaches. Although the train will still be pulled by a diesel-powered locomotive, a set of 16 solar panels atop each coach will replace the diesel generators that typically power these appliances. The railways estimate that a train with six solar-powered coaches could save around 21,000 litres (5,547 gallons) of diesel every year, worth around $108,000. In 2014, Indian Railways consumed 2.6 billion litres of diesel, accounting for around 70% to the network's total fuel bill of $4.4 billion. The first of these trains will be pressed into service on the suburban railway network of New Delhi, one of the world's most polluted cities, before two dozen more coaches are fitted with similar rooftop solar systems. Retrofitting each coach with these system, including an inverter to optimise power generation and battery for storing surplus power, costs around $14,000.
That's nice now if they can just stop people from trying to leap onto the engine fronts or sides of cars they may have something. Seem some crazy videos of the train system in India its like something from a 100 years ago.
I can't see how anything could possibly keep an idea like this from working.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
...with hundreds of people sitting on them?
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Rs 28,592 crore = USD 4.5 billion, approximately
Rs 9 lakh = USD 14,000
...if the roof has solar panels, where do most of the passengers sit?
I've been on Indian trains....the roof is a significant part of the carriage capacity.
-Styopa
21,000 liters ~5,000 gallons = 108,000 dollars of fuel ?
Yeah something is wrong with the story from the get go.
Unlike western societies, where we generally use every 3rd power of 10 as a reference (thousand, million, billion), India uses the 5th power of 10 - "lakh" is 10^5 (which is one hundred thousand), and "crore" is 10^10 (which it 10 billion) as its main "reference" powers.
Rs9 lakh should be parsed similar to how $1bn would be parsed in the US - 9 lakh rupees, which is 900,000 rupees. At current exchange rates, this is around $14,000 US.
The panels pay for themselves by almost an order of magnitude in the first year. If that is a dent, it is a big one.
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Nice explanation. Just confusing since the topic was translated into English, but used a word that very few English speakers would know. The monetary unit in rupees would be fine, but I didn't even recognize lakh as a numeric unit.
I'm surprised that this isn't already integrated with the locomotive. The locomotive is almost certainly diesel-electric, so why did they have separate generators on the cars, rather than just drawing from the massive diesel generators in the locomotive? And if they add solar panels, to all of the cars why use them to charge batteries, rather than just feeding any excess juice to the locomotive, allowing it to burn a little less fuel to keep the train moving? I suppose this might result in a little bit of waste when the train is sitting still, so I suppose it's worth having enough battery capacity to capture that energy, but most of the time it's sitting still it's probably in a train station which could likely use the power.
Note that I know almost nothing about any of this stuff, so this isn't a "they're stupid for not doing that" post; I'm actually asking questions. I suppose the simple answer may well be "Because the locomotive isn't presently designed to do that".
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Good job India- the big question though is: why haven't countries been using solar panels on mass transit roofs before now? I'm sure it could save lots of money most places. ... well maybe not mass transit in subways.
First, understand that these panels are not to help move the train, only to power on board electrical equipment (lights, etc).
Although the train will still be pulled by a diesel-powered locomotive, a set of 16 solar panels atop each coach will replace the diesel generators that typically power these appliances.
The first question I have is; How much to install more energy efficient equipment on the train? Second question is; How does that cost/benefit compare to added solar panels and weight. Solar panels only help part of the time, energy efficiency improvements will help 24/7. Unfortunately these articles never give us that kind of critical information, they are more about the symbolic wonder of solar panels.
The panels pay for themselves by almost an order of magnitude in the first year. If that is a dent, it is a big one.
More accurately, the article claims they might.
The article was probably written in Indian English, which is one of the most common languages in India. It's often preferred as the inter-regional language (most regions in India have an indigenous language) as Hindi (the main other choice) is often disliked by Muslim communities.
Rs is the symbol for Rupees. Lakh has already been explained.
The summary is wrong. According to the article, the fuel savings is Rs 12 lakh (1.2 million rupees) per train with six retrofitted cars. The cost to retrofit one car is Rs 9 lakh (900,000 rupees).
So, it should take about 4.5 years to break even.
The numbers in the article suggest break-even in about a year. It seems like a fairly straightforward win for the Indian rail system, and using more solar panels makes them cheaper for everyone else.
Solar cells do not generate energy when there are people sitting on top of them.