Putting solar panels in familiar places is always popular as an idea, but rarely better than putting them on the usual roofs or as rectangular arrays on the ground.

> the railway was fitted with 48 specially-designed solar panels with a combined power of 18 kWp.

18 kW is less than what gets installed on a lot of houses. It took 100 meters to do this. The farther the panels get from the interconnect, the higher the losses along the line.

It’s easy to set up 18kW of panels in one spot. Covering an entire railway with panels would require a different transmission setup to get the power back to somewhere useful.

I really wish we could just forget all of these ideas to put solar panels in places that are highly trafficked and serving double duty. Just put them in unused space that isn’t used for anything else: Rooftops, empty fields, or over parking garages. I often get downvoted for saying this because a lot of people like these ideas of putting solar panels in space that they see, like sidewalks or roads or railways, but we have so much unused space that isn’t near foot traffic, road traffic, or railways that is so much cheaper and easier to use for solar. These projects usually turn into political grifts to get government funding because the ideas are not economically viable alternatives.

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ceejayoz an hour ago | parent [-]

> It took 100 meters to do this.

Thankfully, Switzerland has lots of meters of railway.

> Covering an entire railway with panels would require a different transmission setup to get the power back to somewhere useful.

There's caternary on 99% of Swiss rail, every few dozen meters, that already transmits power.

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Aurornis an hour ago | parent | next [-]

> Thankfully, Switzerland has lots of meters of railway.

The linear meters of railway are nothing compared to the square meters of rooftops. Putting panels in a long row is the maximally worst arrangement you can come up with.

> There's caternary on 99% of Swiss rail, every few dozen meters, that already transmits power.

I guarantee this wasn’t oversized to accommodate power transmission duties, too.

It’s also high voltage line. The solar setup would need additional and expensive high voltage equipment to interface with the line and to work within the design parameters of a line that was designed to deliver to the train, not carry extra power.

You could put the panels anywhere else and connect them normally to the grid like every other installation.

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ceejayoz an hour ago | parent [-]

> I guarantee this wasn’t oversized to accommodate power transmission duties, too.

Its sole purpose is power transmission, to the trains.

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Aurornis an hour ago | parent [-]

You understand that wire doesn’t have infinite capacity, right? You can’t just point to a wire and say “problem solved”.

I can’t even tell if you’re honest or just trolling at this point in the conversation.

	▲	ceejayoz an hour ago \| parent [-]
		> You understand that wire doesn’t have infinite capacity, right? Why would it need that? Your original complaint was "18 kW is less than what gets installed on a lot of houses". Which is it? Too much to handle or too little?

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mschuster91 an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

> There's caternary on 99% of Swiss rail, every few dozen meters, that already transmits power.

Switzerland runs on 15 kV catenary voltage. Transformers suitable for that kind of voltage cost a lot of money.