Discussion
Now I'm on a long train ride home, time to post a follow up thread answering some of the themes in the responses to my Solar railways thread I posted on the train I started this trip on.
A lot of the replies were along the lines of alternative railway related places to put solar panels. So I'm going to focus on those.
1/n
@quixoticgeek my very simple response would be:
A good rule of thumb is that putting any device on a train makes it 10x more expensive, for the same functionality.
No matter how many solar panels you tack onto a train, you’re not going to earn that back from the electricity you generate.
I love trains, and I love solar panels; but these two things belong in different habitats.
Let's start with a simple one. Put them on the train itself. On the face of it, a pretty sensible idea. Trains have a big surface area, and they use electricity. The problems tho are some of the same as those of putting the solar between the rails. Namely cleanlyness, maintainability, and where the power goes. If you've used an NS train in recent years you may have struggled to see much of the Dutch countryside out the window cos they are so dirty.
2/n
There's no point getting a few kwh hour of kwh of power off the roof of the train if you are then going to spend more on treating the water needed to wash the train more often. Doing maintainence on panels fitted to a train is going to be a faff too, cos you have to take the train out of service to do it. It's also a safety critical location, you need to make sure your panel doesn't come off at the 100-320kph the train is doing.
3/n
The final point tho is what do you do with the power on that train? you're not going to be feeding it into the grid meaningfully, and trains consume what is more energy than you could hope to get from solar on the top of the train. There are better places for panels.
Ok, so what's the next suggestion?
Put the panels above the railway.
Ok, so assuming you're looking at an electrified railway (which all railways should be). Then that means putting the panels above the knitting.
4/n
The space above the panels is by it's nature a right pain to access. Not only do you need to arrange posession of the track segment, but now you also need to make sure power is disconnected. Your solar kit there also makes the railway line maintainance harder as they now have to navigate additional equipment, as well being careful that say, their cranes don't munch into the bottom of the panels. You could do it, but there's so many places that are much much better for panels.
5/n
So the least worst of all the suggestions we got was along the lines of making a fence from the panels along the length of the railway. You have some of the same access problems, but you may be able to do panel maintainence without a full on track posession. But it does require that you orientate the panels to be equatorial facing. Vertical panels are a surprisingly sensible idea in many places. You trade off maximum possible summer yield for a higher winter yield.
6/n
A vertical row of panels along the side of the railway isn't that bonkers an idea. But it has a lot of of the same problems with cable runs and it is a more complicated place to locate panels than many other possible locations. If it turns out we've filled all the better locations and we still need PV, then a row of panels along the railway line is certainly a possibility. But it would never be my first choice as a location for panels.
7/n
So what is? As I said in the original thread, the station roof is the ideal location. It already exists, access isn't too difficult, there's nearby users for the power generated, and it's not a safety critical location. The next best location is to build platform shelters from the panels. I've ranted at great length about the importance of shade as part of public transport, this is a great way to provide shade and generate electricity. It's a win win. It's not perfect tho.
8/n
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