TfL solar panels could power entire Victoria Line for nine months every year, officials say

New solar installations which directly feed Transport for London’s (TfL’s) private electricity supply could power the Victoria Line for nine months every year, officials have revealed.

Earlier this month the transport network announced a deal with SSE Energy Solutions to deliver renewable electricity directly to the Tube network through rooftop and ground mounted solar panels.

Once constructed, the solar installations alone could deliver up to 65,000 megawatt hours (MWh) of energy every year – equivalent to around three-quarters of the estimated consumption of the Victoria Line, which serves up to 250 million passengers a year.

This is just over four per cent of the total TfL energy consumption of 1.6 terawatt hours per year, but officials are optimistic that the solar project can help achieve the ambition for the network to use 100 per cent renewably sourced electricity across all operations by 2030.

“This is about developing new solar installations on our network or near our network and then being able to tap directly into what we call our private wire where we have our own substations and our own electricity network,” Lilli Matson, Chief Safety, Health and Environment Officer at TfL, told the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS).

“That means it’s a more efficient way of delivering electricity and it’s going straight into the requirements of the London Underground.

“This is a really significant part of our change, but it’s only one step on the journey to transitioning all of our electricity requirements to renewables.”

Asked about where all the solar panels will go, Ms Matson suggested that TfL and SSE Energy Solutions would use every tool in their arsenal to find suitable sites.

This could result in TfL-linked installations on “large rooftops… very large car parks… even on our own depots”, she said, with a likely mix of massive panels combined with smaller ones “dotted around”.

A separate deal with EDF to build a solar installation on Longfield Farm in Essex will see construction begin in 2026, but the difference with that setup is it will be connected to the National Grid. Only 20 per cent of its output will go to TfL, whereas the SSE deal sees all energy fed into TfL’s supply.

The amount of electricity generated will, naturally, rise and fall throughout the year depending on the great British weather – with 65,000 MWh generated being the aim rather than the baseline.

“Even at its maximum capacity, this project is less than five per cent of our electricity requirements – we will be using all this electricity for the London Underground,” Ms Matson said, suggesting incoming generation from selling power back to the grid was a “nice concept” but not grounded in reality.

How about the other way round – if there are a few days, perhaps weeks, of cloudy or rainy weather, will TfL be caught short?

For Londoners, the answer is, thankfully, not, as most of TfL’s electricity is taken from the National Grid and will continue to be, and even if that fails, a backup power plant in Greenwich has been on hand since 1988 to provide emergency supplies.

As well as providing green jobs, the agreement with SSE Energy Solutions appears key in TfL’s climate friendly acceleration, which includes the electrification of the entire bus fleet in London and converting lighting across the network to less energy-hungry LEDs.

“For the customer, I think what we’d be looking for is that they could be confident that the energy that’s powering their journey is green energy and the environment they experience in our stations is a clean, bright, energy efficient environment, which is pleasant to be in,” Ms Matson said.