At the turn-of-the-century Rozella Railway Station in Nuwara Eliya District, the telephone no longer has to be hand-cranked, thanks to solar power.

The Railways may no longer be the transportation backbone of the country, but they certainly are the lifeline of the hill country - for its people as well as its produce. To keep the trains running safely and on time, repeater stations, signalling and semaphoring equipment, the telegraph and telephones have to work reliably around the clock. But a number of stations as well as large lengths of track are still outside the national electricity grid.

Commissioned by Sri Lanka Railways, Sunpower along with NAPS of Finland devised the technology to solarise these applications. We generate more than 30 KW of electricity at their repeater stations. 

Railway track signal equipment can now be powered by inexpensive, maintenance-free solar power systems installed by Sunpower. These are replacing expensive storage batteries, which have to be replaced regularly and sometimes simply vanish through human intervention!

The Sri Lanka Army too uses our solar panels to power their communication stations. The list of applications that we have designed is extensive and we are always on the lookout for new challenges.