Athens’ Urban Rail Transport (STASY) announced it will invest in green technology to reduce its overall energy consumption and plans to launch a tender for a pilot project to install a regenerative breaking system on one of its lines in January 2024.

Specifically, STASY will renovate two of the substations on one of its lines in order to be able to recover the energy generated from the breaking of trains and redistribute it to the public grid, thus reducing its overall consumption.  The pilot project will be conducted on the main line that runs north-south through Athens, known as ‘Line 1,’ and the aforementioned substations are located in Neo Faliro and Heraklio.

Initial estimates on the pilot show the system likely generating around 4,500 MWh of electricity annually, which covers 12.5pct of the total energy consumption for Line 1. If all goes well with the pilot, STASY plans on rolling out the system to its other lines as well.

STASY is optimistic that the project will also lead to improved operational performance as old equipment will necessarily be replaced as part of the process, and notes that the green tech is slotted to be installed on Line 4, which is currently under construction.

Line 4 has a budget of 4,174,000 euros plus VAT, which has already been approved through the National Strategic Reference Framework.