KiwiRail has won a Deloitte Energy Excellence Award for saving energy via its locomotives.
The company won the ‘large energy user initiative of the year’ category for its locomotive fuel conservation project, which includes the driver advisory system rollout.
Chief executive Peter Reidy received the award on behalf of KiwiRail. “Saving fuel in locomotive operations makes environmental and financial sense. The first full year of the initiative saw KiwiRail achieve fuel savings of four million litres of diesel, approximately 6% of our fuel volume, and avoid 10,800 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions,” he said.
“Achieving this has not been easy. Our trains make 340,000 trips each year on 3500km of track. We installed the new system on 170 diesel locomotives, trained our 355 locomotive engineers and implemented operational and process changes to make sure we balanced savings in fuel use against getting the freight job done.”
The system uses Energymiser technology to develop an ideal driving scenario for routes, advising drivers when to brake, when to coast and when to accelerate to achieve fuel savings and keep the train on time.
“Ultimately the success of the project came down to our asset servicing teams and locomotive engineers buying into and using the new processes and technology,” concluded Low. “KiwiRail has to be sustainable, both financially and environmentally.”
