After ten months of testing, the Swiss Federal Office of Transport has approved the installation of the country's first removable solar power plant between railway tracks.
The Swiss startup project Sun Ways, which is in pilot phase, seeks to integrate solar technology into railway infrastructures by using the space between the tracks to install power plants, without interfering with rail traffic. trains.
The Buttes (NE) pilot project is scheduled to be launched in spring 2025 on a section close to Buttes station in Switzerland. The project consists of the installation of 48 x 380 W solar panels, distributed over 100 linear meters and covering an area of 100m².
The installed capacity will be 18 kWp. All the energy generated will be injected directly into the local grid. The updated cost of the pilot project is 585 thousand Swiss francs.
In 2023, the company proposed using the space between train tracks, promising to transform 1,3 million kilometers of railway tracks em solar powered power plants. Sun-Ways has carried out a series of tests to prove the technical feasibility of the project. Currently, the prototype panels on the tracks support train speeds of up to 150 km/h.
“An expert report indicates that the Sun-Ways device remains perfectly stable when trains pass at up to 150 km/h and is resistant to winds of up to 240 km/h. On the section chosen for the pilot project, the maximum speed is 70 km/h,” the company said.
According to the company, this technology can be manually installed ou mechanically through a railway machine designed by Scheuchzer SA, which allows the installation of up to 1.000 square meters of photovoltaic panels per day. Furthermore, the entire solar plant can be removed without interfering with maintenance work.
To Baptiste Danichert, co-founder of Sun-Ways, Switzerland's rail networks can produce around 1 TWh of electricity through solar sources every year. This amounts to 30% of the total electricity consumption of public transport companies in the country.
Load tests and reaction to rail expansion with temperature changes will still be carried out in the pilot project and, after completion of this phase, Sun-Ways will follow the implementation in a longer line.
A solar plant installation and electrical connections to the local network will be carried out in the 2025 spring from Viteos, electricity distributor in the canton of Neuchâtel, and by DG-Rail, a company specialized in railway electrical installations.
The company is working together with authorities e regulators to ensure compliance with all operational standards quality Safety, in addition to ensuring the maximizing efficiency e greater durability in real conditions.
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