State-run engineering firm BHEL on Thursday said it has successfully commissioned a 1.7 MW solar photovoltaic (PV) plant at Bina in Madhya Pradesh for the Indian Railways.

The plant will directly feed power to traction systems of Indian Railways, a Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited (BHEL) statement said.

"The project is a landmark achievement in the history of solar power, as this is the first time that solar power is being directly used for traction applications. Notably, with this, BHEL has achieved direct injection of single-phase 25 kV power to traction substation of Indian Railways," it added.

This is a pilot project by the company developed on turnkey basis on vacant land of Indian Railways. The concept to design and engineering was carried out in less than one and a half month and the project has been installed and commissioned by the BHEL in just 4 and a half month, the company said.

This development marks a major step of merging the advantages of renewable energy in the railway sector in an unprecedented way, the company said.

With this successful demonstration by BHEL, Indian Railways' objective of turning its huge land bank into captive PV power plants for supporting the Railway traction grid without the support of utilities and the Railways' initiative of Go Green' by 2030, will become a reality, the statement added.

The project has been jointly conceptualised and developed by BHEL and Indian Railways. BHEL's scope in the project envisaged design, engineering, manufacture, supply, construction, erection, testing, commissioning and O&M based on the inputs provided by Indian Railways.

The R&D, development and manufacturing was completed entirely in-house at BHEL facilities at Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Jhansi and Bhopal.

Solar plant equipment such as PV modules, SCADA system and HT switchgear have been supplied by BHEL's manufacturing units located at Bengaluru and Bhopal respectively.

For the first time development of single-phase 850 kW solar inverters and 400 V/25 kV dry type transformers for outdoor duty has been done, the company said.

First Published:Jul 9, 2020 1:14 PM IST