Titagarh Wagons Limited signs PPA to procure 4.8 MW of solar power

India's largest private sector manufacturer of passenger and freight trains Titagarh Wagons Limited, today announced the signing of a Power Purchase Agreement with Fourth Partner Energy to procure 4.8 MW of solar power for its wagon and steel foundries at Titagarh and its state of the art passenger coach and propulsion unit at Uttarpara, to effectively replace approximately 25% of its current annual electricity demand with clean energy. All three power plants are expected to be commissioned by January 2021.

Speaking about this major development, Mr. Prithish Chowdhary, Vice President at Titagarh said, "Reducing Carbon emissions and switching to green energy is no longer an option but a global imperative. At Titagarh, we want to do our part to ensure our production facilities become more environment friendly. We are excited to take on-board Fourth Partner Energy to solarise our Heavy Engineering Division, Titagarh Wagons and Titagarh Steel facilities in West Bengal. Titagarh has been conscious of innovative initiatives in its operations and the Power Purchase Agreement executed with Fourth Partner is another step towards building a sustainable clean energy solution. We believe their quality and execution expertise would make them an ideal partner for us in this endeavour. Apart from a significant reduction in our Carbon footprint, solar power is also cheaper than grid electricity and is a valuable commercial proposition for manufacturing firms that are energy intensive. We expect to see substantial saving in our annual power costs through the use of solar energy. After successful implementation of this project, we plan to also evaluate adding on more solar power capacity in these as well as other units to increase the percentage of clean energy used in our plants." Mr. Prithish Chowdhary added.

Karan Chadha, Head, Business Development at Fourth Partner Energy, added "corporate India plays a pivotal role in energy transition and it is encouraging to see companies like Titagarh lead the change - through these 3 installations spread over 48,000 sq.m of available roof space, Titagarh will offset over 1.3 lakh tons of carbon over the next 2 decades apart from saving costs on every unit of power procured. Our aim is to enable businesses to similarly achieve their low-carbon goals in a cost-effective manner. The company has also partnered with Indian Railways to solarize Jabalpur, Varanasi, Gorakhpur stations and the Nagpur Metro Rail."

Titagarh's procurement of clean electricity is also in-line with the government's vision of net-zero carbon emission in Indian Railways by 2030. The Hon'ble Railway Minister Shri Piyush Goyal recently announced the solarization of 960 stations and the Government's plan to procure 33 billion units of clean electricity by 2030. Alluding to this, Mr. Chowdhary added, "the sector is making great advances towards net-zero emission, with the privatization of the passenger segment being at the forefront of the Governments efforts. Titagarh is committed to fast tracking these goals and furthering the Make in India and Aatmanirbhar Bharat initiatives of the Government."

"It was one of the priority areas for Titagarh to continuously work towards environment sustainability and as a part of this effort, Titagarh has introduced light and energy efficient aluminium-bodied metro coaches for the first time in India which are being designed and manufactured for Pune Metro by Titagarh. These are perhaps the lightest Metro coaches in the country and take us one step closer to having more energy efficient coaches. Introduction of light-weight aluminium coaches would facilitate to reduce the track wear and tear as well as carbon footprints by reduced energy consumption in Indian railways and other metros in India," Mr Prithish Chowdhary added.

Shares of TITAGARH WAGONS LTD. was last trading in BSE at Rs.42.25 as compared to the previous close of Rs. 43.3. The total number of shares traded during the day was 18484 in over 196 trades.

The stock hit an intraday high of Rs. 42.95 and intraday low of 41.8. The net turnover during the day was Rs. 780688.

Source : Equity Bulls

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