Green Energy

Also if it's a cargo train things fall off all the time. Walk along a train track and you will find a bunch of stuff

They can only be serviced

I don't think this should be a concern, I've had them on my roof for 3 years now and not touched them once

Is this really the best way to place them?

Seems so:

But this is just a pilot program. If the system works safely on a busy rail line, it could point to a new way of expanding solar power without covering farmland, forests or mountain slopes with panels. That’s perhaps important in Switzerland, more so than in other places, where renewable energy is urgently needed, but new solar projects can face resistance when they move into cherished landscapes. NIMBY is sadly a global phenomenon.

For the life of me I don’t understand why people are putting them anywhere before every rooftop is covered with them. Roofs are dead space and unlikely to have debris issues (at least compared to a railway).

It seems like the sort of naive gimmick one might expect from a MAD Magazine cartoonist, or Elon Musk on a ketamine binge. It would work to an extent for a while, though whether the amount of electricity generated would justify the maintenance costs to keep it going is another matter.

The arguments against it are the power yield of a panel pointing upwards, and presumably covered with dirt shed by passing trains. That said, it would suffer less impact damage than photovoltaic roads/bike paths floated elsewhere (the occasional rock impact, as opposed to constant traffic). Also, there is a lot of track, so even if a segment generates little power, it adds up. Not enough to power electric trains, though possibly enough to offset the power bill after operating costs are taken into account.

I’m guessing this installation is an experiment to quantify these figures rather than a commitment to roll this out more broadly.

The whole point of the exercise is to put solar panels in the not best location. Otherwise this article would be about wireless power transmission from space.

It’s stupid and genius at once. So, worth a try.

In what world is it reasonable to put a several kilovolt line on the ground? Even subways have safety problems with the third rail.

I too am launching a pilot program that will last until I'm of retirement age.

Wind from trains? Maybe an attachment that brushes them off occasionally.