Swiss startup Sun-ways is planning to build a 18 kW pilot PV system between the racks of a 100-m linear section of a railway line in the Swiss canton of Neuchâtel.
My first reaction was how stupid this is. Dirt, debris and other things will get on the panels and cause lots of problems, but after a few minutes I realized it’s actually quite brilliant.
There are three major costs of solar, the panels, the location, and the wiring + inverters. If the tracks are used as the wires (extremely low resistance paths back to an inverter), the location is wasted space so basically free, and the inverter can be placed anywhere along the path to remove the power from the tracks, the cost of this comes down to mainly the cost of the panel, which is actually pretty cheep these days.
The real challenges will be in cleaning & maintenance, vandalism, and modifying the track to limit the conductive paths (assuming they’re used for this).
They’re not. Swiss rails are extra made so that you can walk over them. All electricity goes overhead for security reasons. If anything, they would probably tap into this overhead-grid.
cleaning & maintenance
possibly. But I can very easily imagine specialized trains cleaning them once every day
vandalism
not really a problem here in switzerland
modifying the track to limit the conductive paths (assuming they’re used for this).
They’re most likely not used for this. All electricity is overhead for security reasons, routing solar energy through the rails would destroy that. Doing that (beyond the 100m test-track) would mean a prolongued political discussion.
My first reaction was how stupid this is. Dirt, debris and other things will get on the panels and cause lots of problems, but after a few minutes I realized it’s actually quite brilliant.
There are three major costs of solar, the panels, the location, and the wiring + inverters. If the tracks are used as the wires (extremely low resistance paths back to an inverter), the location is wasted space so basically free, and the inverter can be placed anywhere along the path to remove the power from the tracks, the cost of this comes down to mainly the cost of the panel, which is actually pretty cheep these days.
The real challenges will be in cleaning & maintenance, vandalism, and modifying the track to limit the conductive paths (assuming they’re used for this).
They’re not. Swiss rails are extra made so that you can walk over them. All electricity goes overhead for security reasons. If anything, they would probably tap into this overhead-grid.
possibly. But I can very easily imagine specialized trains cleaning them once every day
not really a problem here in switzerland
They’re most likely not used for this. All electricity is overhead for security reasons, routing solar energy through the rails would destroy that. Doing that (beyond the 100m test-track) would mean a prolongued political discussion.