Swiss startup Sun-Ways inaugurated its railway PV project in April in Neuchatel, Switzerland, after more than two years of planning. Joseph Scuderi, founder of Sun-Ways, tells pv magazine that the pilot is attracting international attention.
  • @Feddinat0r@feddit.orgEnglish
    17•8 days ago

    Not again…

    • solar streets
    • solar bicycle lanes
    • solar walkways

    Now traintracks…

    Well see, but i mean, you could pretty good steal them

    • @Saleh@feddit.orgEnglish
      12•8 days ago

      From the article:

      According to Joseph Scuderi, the concept of train-track solar is not new. What is new, he said, is this pilot’s panels can be removed by sliding them over, making maintenance work more affordable.

      “This is very important because every three or four years you have big maintenance on the tracks and if you have PV panels installed with screws you cannot do that,” he said. “So, this removable system is very important for railway infrastructure.

      • alleycatEnglish
        8•8 days ago

        If they’re easy to remove, they’re also easy to steal. I wonder how the company dealt with that problem?

  • @IsoKiero@sopuli.xyzEnglish
    14•8 days ago

    I think it was EEVBlog (and likely many others) who made calculations on these ideas few years ago and even if at face value that seems like it should work (train tracks, like roads, cover a significant area) it’s still not feasible. You can’t tilt panels on roads/tracks towards the sun, the panels need to be way more robust so that they’ll survive the conditions and thus less effective than purpose built solar plants, vibrations (specially with trains) shake pretty much everything apart and so on.

    It doesn’t make sense even on power alone when you put the numbers in and much less in a business case where you’d need to make a profit out of the installation.

    Edit: Here’s one discussion on topic https://www.eevblog.com/forum/blog/eevblog-1234-more-epic-solar-roadways-fail!/

    • Mark with a ZEnglish
      8•8 days ago

      Exactly. These projects always try to solve an irrelevant problem with a solution makes things that actually matter much worse.

    • ՈրբունիEnglish
      2•8 days ago

      They’re fine on disused tracks to make the land more useful, which they’re doing in France.

  • @AllNewTypeFace@leminal.space
    English
    6•8 days ago

    To stop them from getting grimy and losing efficiency, trains will be fitted with car-wash-style brushes on their undersides, giving them a good clean as they pass over them.