Issues Pertaining to Energy Conservation in Railway Workshops

Abstract

Energy conservation is the need of the hour in the world and more so in India, not only due to energy imports and energy security concerns but also due to growing concerns of its environmental implications. Indian Railways (IR), the nations transport lifeline, is one of the nation’s major energy consumer and is passing through a difficult financial state due to high operating costs of which energy is one amongst them. Carriage Repair Workshops (CRWs) in IR undertake Periodical Overhauling (PoH) of coaches and are major consumers of energy in various forms, viz. petroleum diesel and electricity other than traction applications. CRWs were established in pre-independence era and over the years they have successfully implemented many state-of-the-art energy conservation measures (ECMs) using the latest technologies available globally. This study focuses on two CRWs both located in the south Indian state of Karnataka, one at north part of Karnataka, i.e. Hubli and the second one at Mysore which is in south Karnataka which are into PoH of coaches since several decades. The study delves into two aspects, viz. the drives which have promoted the ECM and the barriers which are impeding the implementation of ECM. Prioritization of barriers helps in focused attention and efforts in the process of overcoming them. The stakeholder’s perspective in any such prioritization scheme is essential and also rewarding. It is observed that the attrition rates in railways are very low and as such most of the employees have vast experience in the organization. To take advantage of the same, the main stakeholders (officers and engineers) of CRWs are interviewed and the various dimensions pertaining to drivers and barriers are collected by face-to-face interviews. Totally 124 respondents which comprise of one-third of the population including both the CRWs were involved in the study. Questionnaire was developed to rank the drivers and factor analysis approach was adopted to group the variables representing barriers into manageable factors and rank them. Forced ranking method was employed to rank the drivers and factor scores for prioritizing the barriers. Five-point Likert scale was used to measure the stakeholder’s perceptions regarding the 25 barrier dimensions in the factor analysis. The study revealed that topmost driver for ECM was “the drive by the workshop management” and the topmost barrier factor was “motivation of employees”. This underscores the need for policy reforms by IR for aggressive implementation of ECMs in CRWs for fruitful results in the years to come.