Comment by Valmond@lemmy.world on Solar panels between railway tracks?

I’m all for putting solar panels all over the place, but won’t these get dusty and oily and need loads of cleaning after trains pass over?

Also, costing €623,000 over three years sounds rather expensive for just 100m (although that roughly equates to 11KW).

Next test: solar panels on the bottom of the ocean.

Subnautica entered the chat.

Cause those things are similar!!

Putting solar panels between rails is as stupid as solar roadways. There is nothing to be gained and just lots of hurdles to overcome to make it (almost) as good as a normal solar panel on a roof or on a stick or on a wall.

Tell me, why on earth would you put solar panels between rails?

Edit: lot of anger here, but no answers why the panels should go between the rails, shaken daily by heavy trains. You invested in it or what?

Tell me, why on earth would you put solar panels between rails?

were just trying to find some efficiency in the space wasted by rail not-in-use. thats a lot of land. im not saying its possible, but i dont think thought experiments about these kinds of things is a bad idea

That’s like 0.00000001% of land.

There is so much unused land, why bother trains and their schedules with a maintenance nightmare between their rails?

It is just a stupid idea with no upside except the oily greasy dirty solar panels up-side that can’t get cleaned because, … wait for it …, there are Trains running over it!

I can’t fathom how such a stupid idea got more that 1 meter away from the bar counter.

Because none of that unused land is set up to allow a machine to easily roll over it and automatically place/replace/clean the panels. Putting panels between the tracks means you get that for free, as the tracks are there anyway, and are already have electrical infrastructure all along their length.

The point of the experiment is to see if those benefits end up outweighing the presumably higher chance of panels getting damaged. In the worst case it ends up not being worth while and there isn’t a huge loss, in the best case we end up being able to add a bunch of additional solar capacity without having to build much new infrastructure or cover any previously unused land.

And it would be trivially easy to have a train run over the tracks to clean the panels, there are already trains which use compressed air/sandblasters/lasers to remove leaves and stuff from the rails. Just add a few more compressed air nozzles in between and boom, all your panels are now clean.

Okay, finally some valid points.

The problem is that it’s just better to put the panels some meters on the side, or better yet, elsewhere. Electronics and solar panels just don’t like the vibrations from 1000 tonne trains making them vibrate all day long.

I also think you wildly underestimate the simplicity to have some sort of automatic, or semi automatic “train” installing those panels. Removing the bad ones etc.

It all boils down to, is it economically viable?

It just adds costs, the cost of setup, the cost of running it, also it will most probably not function as many years, when they are dirty they will produce less. So only more expensive.

Also, how are you going to transport the electricity along hundred of kilometers of panels laid out as a string? Low voltage is secure but lossy. Have power stations that inject it in the 20.000 volt lives overhead? More costs.

If we lived on a very small planet filled with trains, maybe Solar Trainways TM would have a chance, here on planet earth, not so much.

I agree, there’s so much land elsewhere. Even just beside the tracks would be better than between the tracks

That could actualy have real world benefits, like when there are few trains, a special small train could go by and let maintenance people off/on there for example.

This works in factorio really well

ha, ok. youll be ok. its alright. everything will be just fine.

why dont you have some nice warm milk and this cookie. youll feel right as rain.

Everything will be fine, except this extraordinarily stupid idea.

Did you invest in it or something? I mean you have no answers just other than “here take a cookie” lol

I like the idea. Free land use. I wonder if the rails can be used as electric conductors. A special train can deploy tons per day, and could clean them regularly in a highly automated way.

Unlike roadways, they don’t carry any load.

This just shows you like the idea but don’t have any formal training in say constructing stuff.

Are you going to run 1000 volt through the rails? The rails who are bolted to the earth, like grounded? Did you think that one over :-) ?

I mean we all have thise fun ideas, and that’s actually great, because some are good even if the overwhelming numbers are not. The thing is that all the easy ones has been taken.

About the train “deploying tons a day”, where did you get that from? Also with hundred of thousands panels lining your train tracks you’ll need to replace broken ones, will you stop regular trains to do that?

And god forbid one rattles loose and wrecks the underside of a passing train as it gets sucked up by the wind from the moving train lol.

It’s just not a good idea.

I don’t know about the practicality of rails as conductor, but it wouldn’t have to be high voltage.

About the train “deploying tons a day”, where did you get that from?

article said special train could deploy 1000 panels per day.

The lower the voltage the higher the loss, there is a reason power lines are hundreds of thousands volts.

What about the rails being grounded?

So if the panels are square, like 1km per day? That’s not much for an existing rail line, and when are you going to do it? There are trains rolling there all the time.

What do you think, is it still a good idea?

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