Photovoltaic, a solar power plant between the railway tracks in Switzerland

Switzerland will have a solar power plant between the railway tracks.

After the “solar roads” projects in China and France, with not always positive results (the French attempt ended badly and was definitively dismantled last summer), or the cycle paths covered with photovoltaic panels in the Netherlands, the Switzerland with a plant, this time between the railway tracks.

This is an 18 kW photovoltaic system that will be installed right between the rails of a railway line in the Swiss canton of Neuchâtel. A fully removable pilot project that has received the approval of the Federal Office of Transport (FOT), developed by the Swiss startup, which plans to begin installing the system next year, on a 100-meter linear section of railway 221 , managed by transN, the canton’s public transport company. The system will consist of 48 panels with a power of 380 W each. The project will be built at a cost of 621,800 euros and will feed energy directly into the local grid.

Sun-Ways is the name of the company that will carry out the construction of the system, in collaboration with the local electricity supplier Viteos and DG-Rail, a company specialized in railway electrical systems.

The project, in 2023, was initially rejected by the UFT due to lack of information on the patent. However, Sun-Ways did not give up and requested an independent evaluation from mechanical engineers from the Haute Ecole d’Ingénierie et de Gestion du Canton de Vaud. The clearance came only later, after a further technical and safety analysis conducted by Geste Engineering, a Swiss company specializing in large-scale railway engineering projects. These analyzes were conducted to ascertain all the necessary requirements, given that the pilot installation will be operational on a railway line open to traffic. Having passed all the tests, the system was found to be perfectly compatible with the criteria required by the UFT.

If the pilot project were to provide all the hoped-for confirmations, we could begin to exploit an otherwise unused space for much larger stretches, without interrupting railway traffic or track maintenance and inspection work. The company also reiterated that, in the case of installations on long sections of the railway network, the solar modules can be positioned thanks to a railway machine specially designed by Scheuchzer SA, an expert in railway maintenance, which declared it can install up to 1,000 m² of solar panels per day. Furthermore, the solar system is totally removable, allowing maintenance work on the railway section at any time without interrupting the operation of the line.

Last but not least, it should be considered that the system has no visual or environmental impact, making the railway system an even more sustainable solution.