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Trains in Switzerland Are Now Running Over Solar Panels in a First-of-Its-Kind Test
(www.zmescience.com)
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this post was submitted on 03 Jun 2026
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Deployment on rails is dirty cheap. Can be highly automated and you have highvolt power line just a few meters away.
If you put solar upon your roof, 2/3 of the costs are labor costs. The material bill encompasses electrics, mounting system, cables, and pv panels that can get reduced on railways as well.
Cheap if you only count the cost of plopping them down and walking away, the train could kick up enough dust and debris that efficiency is impacted significantly more than installing them on a roof would have been, necessitating installing new ones sooner.
It’s all theory. That’s why I think it’s worth a try and learn the facts.
Edit: A rough estimation with averages: 10 kWp gives 11kwh a year in Swiss, 1kwp panel costs 500€, 1kwh energy costs 0,28 EUR in Swiss. Panel material costs for 10 kWp is 5,000€ and earns you 3,080€ (11,000*0,28€) yearly. This shows the value of the idea.
Don't forget about the inverters.
Low voltage (such as the output from a solar panel) suffers badly from losses over distance. Centralised solar makes up for this by having a large amount of panels close to a central inverter. There is going to be a distance tipping point of cost vs losses, if this is short and you need a lot of inverters, that's going to become a major expense.
What if the train runs a street sweeper brush behind it to clean them off every time?