Indian Entrepreneur: Electricity through running trains?

INDIAN ENTREPRENEUR:

Bangalore: An Indian entrepreneur has proposed a project to Indian Railways which will allow it to generate electricity through air pressure from running trains. Santosh Pradhan, who runs a bunch of engineering and mechanical units, has almost two decades of experience in manufacturing engineering tools.

"When a train runs at a full speed of 110-120 km, it creates an air pressure in opposite direction and no one has ever thought to utilize this huge air pressure which is freely and easily available," Pradhan told PTI. As per his technology, a small impeller is fixed at the front portion of railway locomotive and similarly on top of each coach of a train. "When the train is running, it will produce huge quantity of compressed air due to high velocity of the wind and by accumulating this compressed air in big fabricated tanks on either side of the track, we can run turbines or air turbine motors which can produce a considerable amount of electricity," he explained.

Pradhan has registered 20 patents with the government of India about his technology so that he remains the sole person to further develop this technology. He has now approached the higher railways authorities to seek permission for prototype and a subsequent demonstration of this technology which he says is 'eco-friendly and cost effective'.

Pradhan said about 14,300 trains were running on 63,028 route KMs in the country and about 20.89MW electricity can be generated per km with the use of air power technology. Thus approximately 14,81,134MW of power can be generated by using the entire railway track, according to his statistics and calculations. Pradhan says that the Indian Railways was spending 17 percent revenue on the fuel head which is roughly Rs. 15,000 crore (Rs. 150 billion) per annum. He also claims that the technology can save 2,586 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emission in the country.

However, it all depends on the Indian Railways to allow additional fabrication of parallel wind pipes over the over head electric lines to pass on high velocity wind to reach tanks on either of side of track, Pradhan added.