Discussion
Ye fucking gods, just like how techbros keep reinventing the bus, it seems in solar circles, the idea of putting solar panels in transport surfaces is an idea that a) should never had be got off the fag packet sketch, b) keeps coming back.
We had the trial of a 100m long 18KW install in Switzerland. Which unsurprisingly, did generate power. Noone is surprised by that. It's quite hard to fuck up a solar install so you don't get power from it. But. Does it mean it's a good idea ?
Fuck no.
1/n
15 years ago I was waiting for a co-worker in the carpark and sweating and when he arrived I said "you know, if we put solar panels all over this space it would be cooler and we'd save money" and he goes "Peter, we're an oil company".
@quixoticgeek Did you see the recent article about the UK floating solar panels on a water reservoir? That seems like a super sensible idea. The power from the panels supplies about 1/3 of the water treatment system's power. Shortest possible cable run, and they documented a bunch of other benefits, to the ecosystem too.
Your carpark and shop roof suggestions and stuff like this are far more practical than this rail nonsense. But how do we get billions to do something that just works? And you can't get a monopoly to jack up prices and rip off the government if there's lots of little power sources owned by lots of small businesses/local people.
@paco floating solar has been deployed widely. It's a great idea.
@quixoticgeek
"Solar Freaking Roadways!" again, isn't it.
@quixoticgeek We need a term like Gadgetbahn, but for solar.
@quixoticgeek Amazing breakdown. Thank goodness, I can link people to this thread as a nice replacement when they go and post an ancient video from a certain shithead 'skeptic' about why solar roadways were bad.
I read all the way through, and I'm very glad to see that aggressive grinding of the rails, and burning piles of thermite to weld rails together, and then grinding all the excess metal off - doesn't appear as a risk to delicate solar panels mounted right next to the rails which get welded by burning thermite. 😱
@quixoticgeek and you don't want solar panels placed horizontally, accumulating a maximum of dust , rain and snow without hope of eventual rain at least partially cleaning it.
In many latitudes they would be much better off with vertical panels attached to the fences, if they want to deploy next to the railways. Still not a great idea, but at least that would mean fewer access restrictions for maintenance and more sqm of panels per m of rail.
I think the point is you can put solar panels anywhere and everywhere ... even between rail lines... should you put them on rail track... probably not (but you could)
There are better options... which need to be utilised long long before some other options
We need to exploit the easier options...
@quixoticgeek
I somehow cannot get worked up about this.
@ritchey_de that's fine. You don't even need to toot that you can't get worked up on it.
@quixoticgeek
That’s how I felt about your very worked up thread.
@quixoticgeek okay, fine, not on the tracks. Just wait for my next visionary idea: solar panels on train roofs! 💡
(I know this is also a terrible idea)
@quixoticgeek instead of sticking them into the bodywork of an electric vehicle ...
@quixoticgeek Try Infrastrukturdiagnose like assessing the state of sleepers when you can't see them with your visual camera inspection vehicle: https://company.sbb.ch/de/bahnentwicklung/bahnbetrieb/bahnumfeld/mess-diagnosetechnik.html
You put solar on railway tracks and roadways when you run out of better places to put it!
At present there are still plenty of places where solar can be safely installed like building roofs, car park shades, covers over walkways, along wall and fence boundaries etc.
We can also usefully rip up biofuel crops and put panels there to produce far more energy than burning the crops would ever produce with the side benefit of improving biodiversity below the panels.
Unfortunately because it hasn't resulted in fire and death, the company behind it are trying to do it again. This time in Italy.
The problem is, it's still a fucking stupid idea. Railways are a really bad place to do anything. Vehicles weighing hundreds of tons doing high speeds on rails, with stopping distances measured in kilometres. Railways are safety critical infrastructure. Which means there's processes and procedures to follow everytime you need access.
2/n
@quixoticgeek It seems to me that if you're going to do such a thing, next to the lines makes a hell of a lot more sense.. in that picture there's loads of space around it.
I thought all the solar roadways companies went bust when it became obvious how stupid it was..
If you ever look at the area of track between the rails. You'll see it's covered in all sorts of crap. Oil, lubricants, and all sorts of other fluids fall out the bottom of trains into this space, along with dust, sand (from brakes), leaves, litter, etc... This will all need to be cleaned off to keep the panels operating at peak performance. Except you can't just send a student down with a mop and bucket. You need to arrange track possession, and do all the risk assessment stuff.
3/n
@quixoticgeek Someone described this solar panel scheme as "the world's most expensive dragging equipment detector" because sooner or later something will be dangling below the rail level and they will find out because the power output from the solar panel suddenly drops to zero.
@quixoticgeek Whenever track maintenance needs to come in and adjust thr tracks on the ballast, this hypothetical solar panel assembly needs to come off and afterwards needs to be put back in. It's so impractical and bonkers that people think this would be practical. Putting these things nearly anywhere else makes so much more sense. Gareth Dennis has done a lengthy critical rant on this and he's a railway engineer, so he knows what he's talking about.
@quixoticgeek RAIB report 07/2026 (Near-miss at Bookham Tunnel, UK) and SUST report 2024090301 (deadly workplace accident near Schlieren, Switzerland) come to mind as some examples of what happens when the possession is not appropriately managed
@quixoticgeek surely a branch line trial should be the option. Lower frequency, lower risk.
I don't think this is a good idea for high frequency, national critical infrastructure
Railways also come with a lot of extra gubbins beyond the two rails nailed to wood planks (or more often bolted to concrete these days). In more modern networks, rather than burning dinosaurs, the railways have power which comes from all that knitting above the tracks. The above here is the problem. Cos it's going to shade the panels. "But it's only a thin wire, so a small shadow" I can hear some techbro angry typing. You don't need to fully obscure a whole panel to reduce it's output.
4/n
Partial shading of panels is a big problem that is often overlooked by solar installers. Any shading of a section of a panel not only stops they bit of the panel generating electricity, but it turns it into a higher resistance section of panel, reducing even further the output of the rest of the panel. Having support posts and knitting and all that other gubbins above and around the track to shade the panels is a really suboptimal situation to build solar.
5/n
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