Really long and thin strips that can’t be angled. They can only be serviced while the track is closed and need to survive whatever debris a train might fling at them. Is this really the best way to place them?
Solar freaking railways.
For the life of me I don’t understand why people are putting them anywhere before every rooftop is covered with them. Roofs are dead space and unlikely to have debris issues (at least compared to a railway).
It’s companies trying to make a quick buck. They tried this with roads too.
Obviously every home should have them first and all newly built homes should be built with solar efficiency in mind.
Deployment on rails is dirty cheap. Can be highly automated and you have highvolt power line just a few meters away.
If you put solar upon your roof, 2/3 of the costs are labor costs. The material bill encompasses electrics, mounting system, cables, and pv panels that can get reduced on railways as well.
Cheap if you only count the cost of plopping them down and walking away, the train could kick up enough dust and debris that efficiency is impacted significantly more than installing them on a roof would have been, necessitating installing new ones sooner.
It’s all theory. That’s why I think it’s worth a try and learn the facts.
Edit: A rough estimation with averages: 10 kWp gives 11kwh a year in Swiss, 1kwp panel costs 500€, 1kwh energy costs 0,28 EUR in Swiss. Panel material costs for 10 kWp is 5,000€ and earns you 3,080€ (11,000*0,28€) yearly. This shows the value of the idea.
Don’t forget about the inverters.
Low voltage (such as the output from a solar panel) suffers badly from losses over distance. Centralised solar makes up for this by having a large amount of panels close to a central inverter. There is going to be a distance tipping point of cost vs losses, if this is short and you need a lot of inverters, that’s going to become a major expense.
What if the train runs a street sweeper brush behind it to clean them off every time?
Roofs are actually not that great. Installation is expensive because you are working at height. Roof angles and directions are also not ideal on many houses. Compare it to a simple installation on a field: You just take some corn field, stop growing corn there and can put your panels on some cheap holders and you’re good. You can access and service them without the danger of falling from a roof. You can install them on an industrial scale instead of a few square meters on every single roof. You need only one electrical installation.
People love to cry about the loss of agricultural space, but currently we are growing a lot of corn to convert it to fuel or to put it into biogas installations. If you convert those field to solar, you will get more energy from them. And the loss of a big monoculture that is using a lot of pesticides is also great.
You can still grow stuff in them with agrivoltaics. You don’t have to lose the productive land below it
And even if you do not: It’s better for the environment to not grow corn and just have some grass underneath the solar panels.
If you choose the right crops or use grazing pastures in warmer climates, it’s not bad either.
Hell parking lots are massive areas of dead space, build them over the damned things, it’ll help against the heat island affect and give shade.
Or in parking lots. It would also have the added benefit of providing cover for cars.
I don’t think they’re a lot of surface parking on Switzerland like in the US
I do occasionally see parking lots with solar here in LA! So it is happening in some places.
Every parking lot needs approval of the location, its probably a a pain in the ass, and would disrupt parking while being built which impacts sales (or will be perceived to anyway). If this worked, you only need to deal with a small group of people for a very large space.
Meanwhile…it’s mandatory in France for any newly built parking lot over a certain size.
Thats a good way to get it to start happening as it avoids a lot of the problems
You need some serious concrete and/or steel hardware to build a carpark roof that can hold the solar panels without easily being damaged by cars or broken by strong wind, so that massively inflates the costs. If you had a state owned company producing cheap solutions for this it could work though.
Yeah, a lot of the places around me are putting up these massive structures. I don’t know why they don’t just install open sided polebarns
Probably because people are very bad drivers lol.
You can lay them down and remove them again and also clean them with automation. There are power lines nearby as well as consumers, electric trains.
Installing on roofs is manual labor and needs electricians. Which is why you see so many solar farms by the roadside.
Yes exactly, it makes no sense!
It seems like the sort of naive gimmick one might expect from a MAD Magazine cartoonist, or Elon Musk on a ketamine binge. It would work to an extent for a while, though whether the amount of electricity generated would justify the maintenance costs to keep it going is another matter.
The arguments against it are the power yield of a panel pointing upwards, and presumably covered with dirt shed by passing trains. That said, it would suffer less impact damage than photovoltaic roads/bike paths floated elsewhere (the occasional rock impact, as opposed to constant traffic). Also, there is a lot of track, so even if a segment generates little power, it adds up. Not enough to power electric trains, though possibly enough to offset the power bill after operating costs are taken into account.
I’m guessing this installation is an experiment to quantify these figures rather than a commitment to roll this out more broadly.
I’m guessing this installation is an experiment to quantify these figures rather than a commitment to roll this out more broadly.
No need to guess, it’s right there in the article.
The whole point of the exercise is to put solar panels in the not best location. Otherwise this article would be about wireless power transmission from space.
It’s stupid and genius at once. So, worth a try.
They can only be serviced
I don’t think this should be a concern, I’ve had them on my roof for 3 years now and not touched them once
Is this really the best way to place them?
Seems so:
But this is just a pilot program. If the system works safely on a busy rail line, it could point to a new way of expanding solar power without covering farmland, forests or mountain slopes with panels. That’s perhaps important in Switzerland, more so than in other places, where renewable energy is urgently needed, but new solar projects can face resistance when they move into cherished landscapes. NIMBY is sadly a global phenomenon.
There’s literally gravel beside them in the picture that’d be a better spot 😭
Out of all places where you could possibly place a solar panel, this seems to me like one of the least practical ones. It’s almost all drawbacks
Even just a foot to the left and to the right, they can install double the number of panels while avoiding most of the downsides.
air currents from trains, especially high speed ones throw rocks and debris everywhere.
As a practicing solar engineer, I don’t like the idea of applying solar panels linearly because they can benefit much more from centralization meaning applying panels to an area, but to be honest I think it’s cool that humans are discovering new ways to use these things.
Sunlight is everywhere, so bring on the solarpunk!
Well yeah, the space in between the rails currently isn’t used for anything, might as well put it to use
I’m just wondering how much electricity you realistically can get from these panels as first of all they’re straight up, so most sunlight will come at the panels under an angle, driving efficiency down. Then, I’m sure there is a lot of rail, so a lot of potential area but still… Versus the cost and required energy to install them, what would be the ROI, really?
ROI would take a lonnnnng time, in my view. It’s the same idea as installing modules under asphalt roads or even above them. It’s not really worth the O&M hassle whatsoever.
The same idea goes for installations like canals. They’re linearly too so not the wisest use of modules. But the benefit of modules over water like that is lower rates of evaporation as the panels block the sun. Same is true for water department reservoirs that see lots of algae. The panels block the sun and choke out the algae.
But you’re right about the shading. If these panels are installed in higher latitudes, then odds are they might never see the sun directly at certain times of the year. Usually solar designers only recommend flat horizontal mounting for modules in hurricane- or tropical storm-prone regions like near the tropics, or close to the Equator where the Sun shines directly overhead most of the year.
What I COULD see happening is if governments around the world start transitioning railroads to have H-frame structures that suspend feeder lines like what’s used in electric trains with pantographs. If you set up those H-frames frequently enough, you have the underlying structure similar to carports and can install modules 4-10 modules wide. THEN you can utilize string inverters every 7-8 H-frames or so, converting the solar DC power into AC which can help feed the train loads as they pass or feed the grid.
Bonus of the above system is that over time, all trains including rail freighters become electric or at least hybrid to make use of the free power generated above them throughout the railway.
Lots of ideas!
I mean my city has a metro line that is electric rail. seems like stations having batteries and solar along with solar on the track would make some sense for the elevated areas.
I’ve always been an advocate of the canopies above train stations having solar panels to help power the local loads and maybe push power back to the grid.
Solar canopies are used in many other places like parking garages/lots and canals, so the technology is there.
I’m starting to wonder if it’s the vibrations from the train that makes these installations risky. Those same vibrations would happen to in-track solar PV like what’s shown in OP’s article. It’s certainly possible to design around, as the EU is showing!
yeah I have a hard time believing we lack engineering skills to prevent shaking in structures.
I don’t think it’s that as much as it is putting modules near trains that have glass prone to micro cracks that can highly accelerate degradation of the panels to the point where they start cannabalizing others.
Still, I think you could probably install modules with polymeric front sheets instead of tempered glass to fix that issue.
No such thing as an impossible problem for engineers! Only impossible costs ;)
No such thing as an impossible problem for engineers! Only impossible costs ;)
Makes me think of that one quote, “Any idiot can build a bridge that stands, but it takes an engineer to build a bridge that barely stands”.
Aren’t panels laid in series normally? And if the railway track is electrified then the centralization matter much less.
And if the railway track is electrified
We got 100% electrification rate in Switzerland!
But usually 15kV AC with 16.67 Hz, so probably not useful for connecting the panels to be honest.
Solar is DC. Converting it to 16hz probably isn’t more difficult than converting it to 50hz.
By “in series”, do you mean linearly? Depends on context.
For Commercial & Industrial (C&I) applications like rooftops, canopies, façades, canals, floating islands, and the like, panels can be strung in series linearly sure. But because C&I arrays also tend to be arranged in polygons and more often rectangles, this allows the solar designer to string in non-linear ways.
One way to string in these contexts is to prioritize loops where the start and finish of the string are 1 module apart. A lot of RF enthusiasts don’t like it when modules are strung this way because conductors arranged in a loop act as an antenna that can send and receive EM waves.
Another way to string is the snake or zigzag method where strings are patterned like this: ,|‘’‘’‘’‘|,|’‘’‘’‘’’ in rows that are 2-modules wide. The snake method can also be applied to 3-mod, 4-mod, etc. wide rows depending on what stringing method ends up being feasible.
For ground-mount applications at the community-, Distributed Generation- (DG-), and utility-scales, solar stringing is usually done linearly or in loops due to the constraints of the racking, although snake/zigzag can apply in some instances. Ground-mounts can either take the form of fixed-tilt (FT) racking, single-axis trackers (SATs), or dual-axis trackers (DATs).
With FT, the usually racking setup is 2-in-Portrait (2P) where you have 2 rows of modules abutted next to each other facing South. These are usually designed in long rows along a property line, so it’s easy to make strings completely linear or half-loops where you turn the string around at the halfway point of what would otherwise be a string line. FTs can also be arranged as 3- or 4-in-Landscape (3L or 4L) which allows for more loops and snakes/zigzags.
With SATs, you’re always stringing things linearly.
For DATs, you get the same benefits as C&I, 3Ls, or 4Ls because each DAT is separated from the rest of the array so the mini-array can track the sun. Lines, loops, or snakes/zigzags work, with a preference for loops and snakes/zigzags because DATs are rarely sized large enough to accommodate the entire widths of strings (sometimes 15-30 modules in length).
With railroad-based solar, my bigger concern is that since the modules have to be in a single line that CAN’T repeat in rows to the North/South in a typical array, this means all those strings will need to run a long way before being collected at an inverter to turn into AC. That long length adds to voltage drop in the circuit, which is an energy loss on the system. You can get away with this by adding microinverters for every 1 or 2 modules. Microinverters like that add a lot more complexity in terms of Operations and Maintenance (O&M) purely because there are more parts to break down. With string inverters and even central inverters, you have less O&M breakage but the flip side is that those work better with more centralized/rectangular-like arrays.
Doesn’t mean it can’t be done, but it’s certainly more expensive than any other implementation of solar.
One of the benefits I can actually see with using microinverters over string or central inverters is that you break up the “array” of modules so that shading from the trains affects less of the “array” than if everything was collected at the DC level. You can isolate the shade-affected parts better, and promote better energy reduction.
Idk I’m interested to see what comes from this! Definitely a wild idea haha
Three years ago EEVBlog already published a Video why this is a terrible idea: https://youtu.be/7vItnxhWRqw
Im not convinced much has changed since then. As a Swiss citizen it’s a bit disappointing that a apparent cash grab like this is possible.
And this is why they only put 100m of panels, to test and validate the idea before commiting to any large scale project. As a swiss citizen too, I’m on the contrary quite happy to see those test projects to give a chance to new technologies (or ways to utilize said technologies) before any real investment.
I think the biggest limitations will be security, someone will definitely be trying to steal them
Isn’t this the case with all existing panels?
Yeah but you probably need to put them for long distances and you can’t really put cameras for hundreds of kilometres instead of let’s say the top of a parking lots or an enclosed field
steal them
train damages them
they get dirty
Wildlife infestation
It makes more sense to put them up out of the way angled toward the sun
just set up bleacher style farms along train routes
Tbh this video has poor arguments:
- solar roads startups closed (no shit sherlock. Many startups close everyday)
- dust and wires (sure. However this is an engineering problem and can be solced)
- south corea does it as roof top (what’s the point here?) And that’s it. No real argumenr visible. Just a video for getting ad fees imho.
This guy was never to Switzerland.
Dust --> attach a brush infront of the train
Im not sure we use the machine that he showed in the video to replace the gravel. At the same time it looks like the tracks stay untouched. Its not something that is done often.
He talks about huge shipments of coal in Switzerland xd WHAT THE HELLY ??!!(the 1800s called, they want their environmental policy back)
He wants private citizens to plaster their roofs and their soil with solar. Well they can i guess but its their decision. Just know that the cows in Switzerland usually graze on grass. The railway is 100% Eidgenossen owned.
2% is 2%. People cry about every Rappen on the powerbill. I wouldnt mind paying 2% less and im not even a company.
In the comments they talk about the toilet releasing the waste on the tracks. In Switzerlands trains theres WC’s (water closets). So the sun will evaporate the waste. Also we dont want to eat from the panels its just to generate electricity.
So i found an argument against every argument of his and it took me 10 minutes.
I respect the effort tho it was fun to watch.
I agree with you in that a lot of his arguments are inconveniences rather than blockers. but there are still a lot of problems with the design when we could easily not put them right exactly there and end up with a better outcome.
Dust --> attach a brush in front of the train
Dust + water isn’t going to just brush off, they’ll need to send purpose build devices to wash them and it’s not going to work well at speed.
Im not sure we use the machine that he showed in the video to replace the gravel. At the same time it looks like the tracks stay untouched. Its not something that is done often.
Rebalasting track has to happen based on environment. Some areas will need it often, the rocks beneath the ties end up getting pushed deeper and need to be back-filled
In the comments they talk about the toilet releasing the waste on the tracks. In Switzerlands trains theres WC’s (water closets). So the sun will evaporate the waste. Also we dont want to eat from the panels its just to generate electricity.
Waste has a lot of mineral content and the bioplaques are incredubly durable and not see through.
He talks about huge shipments of coal in Switzerland xd WHAT THE HELLY ??!!(the 1800s called, they want their environmental policy back)
Coal is less prevalant, but even at that, yhere is noting clean about rail lines. Brakes, metal on metal wheels. def need to wash the panels and probably agitate to get dirt off that close to the suspension. It’s solvable. but putting them on racks a few feet away from the track would be less of a mess, not cost all that much and make maintenance and diagnostics easier.
All in all, putting them along rail lines is a reasonable idea, but there’s no real need to cause all these difficulties if they just put them up on slightly elevated structures to one side of the track. The cost for galvanized pipes is barely a rounding error on the whole project.
Are Balkonkraftwerke legal in Switzerland?
Yes, and i see them often even in places where theres not much sun.
I don’t know whether their owners track their production for estimating ROI, but I’m getting 1.7 MWh/year from a 2 kWp DIY in a nonoptimal orientation with some shading, which is worth it at 0.3 EUR/kWh (ok, if your meter can’t run backwards you will need some storage, which has also a cost).
Crazy cheap deployment, but I don’t think those panels will stand up to it very well. The vibration is bad enough, but metal fragments are the real threat, I suspect. I’ve been in a few rail yards, and vehicles that habitually get parked close to rails that are in active service have paint damage from tiny metal chips flying off the rails and wheels. Unless they have some kind of replaceable clear shield, those panels will not just get dirty, they’ll get slowly sandblasted till not much light is actually reaching the photovoltaic panel.
Also if it’s a cargo train things fall off all the time. Walk along a train track and you will find a bunch of stuff
Sometimes a body
Sweet bike path, don’t wear headphones.
More info: https://www.groupe-sncf.com/en/innovation/solar-power-between-rails
The company behind it seems to have already tried it a year ago, and the project is in pilot phase until 2028
I too am launching a pilot program that will last until I’m of retirement age.
Mmmmm, not AS stupid as solar roadways, but them again, what is?
Having said that… How efficient can these panels be just sitting straight up like that? That’ll already cut out some of the efficiency which isn’t going to be very high to begin with with solar
I mean, the basic idea seems good, no heavy materials will drive daily on top of it, like with the solar roadways, but still… How much could you realistically get out of this?
It’s not about “efficiency” in this form. It’s scale. Efficiency prioritization is useful ontop of a single home, Scale prioritization is when you are laying down a million+ panels.
Once those are installed, they’re pretty much permanent with minimum maintenance, and will keep providing power for decades.
Not disagreeing, genuinely curious and hoping you know more than I do. Haha
You say minimum maintenance, but it seems like this would require almost constant maintenance to me. Animals shitting on them, trains blowing dust, rocks, shards of metal onto them, scratching their surfaces and diminishing their use over time by blocking sunlight from constant debris and scratching. Would it not make more sense to measure the height of the lowest bridge/tunnel on the track’s route, and put these on a platform at that height? At that point, they could be angled, or even potentially have those motors that track the sun, while keeping them safe from damage from flying pebbles and dirt, and providing shade for the train to run under? I doubt the shade thing matters that much, but assuming these are passengers trains (I’m a USian, so I’ve only ever heard of passenger trains in folklore and western movies), it could limit the amount of air conditioning the train needed to keep passengers cool, perhaps?
Imagine a street cleaning car. Now imagine that, as a light truck attachment. Now imagine that, attached to any train that goes over the tracks.
Or, just imagine, Something like this: https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/High-Temperature-Resistant-Small-Size-Rail_1601599861898.html
I’d still say these are going to pick up enough scratches to effectively block out most light. Or, at least, that’s the way my brain wants to think about it. Like the way headlights get dim over time because the plastic or glass casing picks up scratching and makes them hazy/foggy/look like sea glass. I’m not trying to suggest that’s what will happen so much as trying to understand why it wouldn’t. Even with the street sweeper hanging under the cow catcher, the bristles of the broom seem like they’d scratch the surface over time and limit light. I’m very certain much, much smarter people than me designed this and have accounted for those issues. I just… Don’t grok how lol
One train even swerved to run over a solar panel that was getting away. /s
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I see it’s time for our yearly Sun-Ways post. Here are the old editions:
SOLAR FREAKIN’ ROADWAYS!
Gadgetbahn type shit
Switzerlands rail network is around 5300km long (source) if you cover around 50% of it, that gives roughly 500MWp installed capacity. A modern locomotive has 4-8MW. That gives you enough energy to power 80 locomotives under full load. I expect them to use much less power once in motion so it may be more in reality. That’s not nothing.
Does that figure account for the 90% power loss from pointing straight up?
Not to mention the constant dirt and debris, snow, tiny scratches and cracks from the high speed trains throwing metal shavings, rocks, random dropped bolts, grease, and everything else onto their surfaces?
Building a platform above the trains at whatever height the lowest bridge on that route is would allow them to change angle to track the sun, and keep them better protected
Clever use of land.
