Infrabel and ENGIE Electrabel have received a prestigious award on behalf of Greensky for the wind farm along the Leuven – Liège high-speed rail line. The wind farm won the Public Sustainable Development Award. Since October 2015, 170 trains a day (dubbed ‘sail trains’) run on this line via wind power thanks to the connection of the Greensky wind farm to the Belgian rail network. This unique and sustainable project supports and encourages the use of renewable energy.
The wind farm in Gingelom along the Leuven – Liège high-speed railway line (HSL2) is connected to the railway installations through the high-voltage substation in Avernas. Following the commissioning of the seven wind turbines on 24 October 2015, two-thirds of the generated renewable energy goes directly to the Belgian rail network. This means that every day around 170 trains – representing nearly 5% of all passenger transport in Belgium – can partially run on wind power over the HSL2 as well as the Leuven – Liège (line 36) and Landen – Sint-Truiden – Hasselt (line 21) conventional railway lines. These wind-power trains have been dubbed ‘sail trains’.
The remaining third of the wind energy is fed into the public power grid and supplies renewable electricity to approximately 10,000 households per year. The seven wind turbines generate roughly 35 GWh of electricity per year, thereby reducing CO2 emissions by 15,000 tonnes. Work on the second phase of the Greensky wind farm will start in the second half of 2016.
The wind farm is part of the Greensky project, a partnership between ENGIE Electrabel (50%), the City of Sint-Truiden (23%), the Brussels Intermunicipal Electricity Company (IBE) (17%) and Infrabel (10%).
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