PV = Photovoltaic
Relevant Dave Jones debunk. https://youtu.be/7vItnxhWRqw?feature=shared
Seems interesting. As far I know I think why not, as long as you place Dragging Equipment Detectors (example) before and after the installation areas. Seems a good a place as any for solar panels, especially on only occasionally frequented lines.
My first reaction was how stupid this is. Dirt, debris and other things will get on the panels and cause lots of problems, but after a few minutes I realized it’s actually quite brilliant.
There are three major costs of solar, the panels, the location, and the wiring + inverters. If the tracks are used as the wires (extremely low resistance paths back to an inverter), the location is wasted space so basically free, and the inverter can be placed anywhere along the path to remove the power from the tracks, the cost of this comes down to mainly the cost of the panel, which is actually pretty cheep these days.
The real challenges will be in cleaning & maintenance, vandalism, and modifying the track to limit the conductive paths (assuming they’re used for this).
Throw a few of those sexy lady mud flaps on the back of a train with a hose. Darn near auto squeegee!
Standing next to trains as they pass, or on one’s with open decks, you’ll know they produce a lot of wind. I assume under the train this is even stronger, with a strong low pressure area. This should be able to clear most obstructions without an issue whenever a train passes. Sure, it’ll also toss more on, but there’s some equilibrium that it’ll reach and it shouldn’t ever get worse. My guess is that’s well before it is a major issue for the panels.
anyone remember solar roadways?
Actually, yes, I do. SOLAR FREAKING ROADWAYS
Yeah, I looked up the French solar roadways after seeing this to see the headline of ‘total disaster’. So as expected.
Lamps were “total disasters” until they weren’t. Crosswalks even. Toilets in Seattle.
There are lots of things that were “total disasters” at one point but were developed into safe reliable things. That’s not a reason to abandon an endeavor entirely, but a great reason to redirect or refine it.
Also, headlines are not news, and most non-electrical engineers, let alone journalists, know jack fucking shit about electrical engineering. EEVBlog did a great few videos about solar roadways and their flaws.
At least for right now it’s just a test on a 100-meter length of track, but this reeks of a startup trying to innovate its way out of NIMBYs not wanting to put solar panels where they actially belong without considering why nobody has put solar panels in the middle of a railroad track before (cough rocks, wildlife, and vandalism cough).
Solar panels need to be on every home and how new builds in many countries still don’t require them baffles me.
Good thing they stopped emptying train toilets on the tracks.
Solar FREAKING
RoadRailways!God, can this concept please die already‽ If you want to put solar panels where the cars/trains are, just 👏 fucking 👏 put 👏 them 👏 on 👏 top👏
Do not put them on the ground where they will get smushed and covered in dust and snow and dirt. do not. Just make a little roof for the train tracks/road/bike path/sidewalk/game trail/snail raceway and then put the panels on top of the roof and then if you’re feeling fancy angle the panels to point towards the sun and if you’re feeling really quite fancy then you can use bifacial panels to capture the backscatter from the ground and shit and then we can all be happy. solar ground no, solar roof yes, ground no roof yes. do not play the trolley problem with solar panels on the ground. we have been doing solar energy for decades and have fucking minmaxed this shit so why are they still trying to do this just STOP.
Fuck.
Solar parkings!! Park your car over solar panels!! Solar pools, put them at the bottom of your pool!! Put them INSIDE!
It’s like an idiot manically obsessed with solar panels got their hands on some heavy drugs.
Why not just make solar roofs over things like parking lots and sidewalks? That way it can provide cover and power, you can use off the shelf panels, and they are unlikely to get damaged.
In France, solar panels are mandatory for living roofs of commercial and industrial buildings and covered car parks occupying 500 m² or more of ground surface.
And you can repair them without needing to shut down a whole railway. All these projects to put solar panels in novel places are totally pointless and solving a problem that doesn’t exist.
Yeah until we literally run out of roofs, fields, parking lots, and fucking ocean space and are contemplating a fucking Dyson sphere I really don’t understand these projects.
Covering parking lots is expensive and you lose spots to supports and there’s the inevitable car hitting those supports.
Putting panels between rail lines doesn’t need a structure so it should be far cheaper and easier to install and fix, even if they aren’t ideal.
They will get dirty very fast, either from dirt thrown around by passing trains, or by the brake dust.
It shouldn’t be too hard to clean them with something running on the tracks, but it does seem less than ideal.
What brake dust? Where they’re contemplating putting this the trains are fully electrified and use regenerative (magnetic) braking during routine operations, the only time the abrasive brakes are engaged is during emergencies
parking lots would require the government to own said parking lots. its why you often see them at schools (because its government funded)
I’m interested to see how this turns out, because I’m thinking this would significantly increase maintenance costs on those panels due to rocks being kicked up, vibration from the train, etc.
You do get the advantage of easy and above all fast placement.
Not sure how this would work out. There’s pros and cons I suppose.
Maybe it’s like a blanket that the train picks up over its head and runs underneath, setting it back down on the ground after it
Reminds me of this, but in reverse:
Pretty close. Quick lets patent it
I don’t understand why we are not putting solar panels on every surface possible to be honest.
Because it is not cost effective. Simple as that.
The problem is that we don’t have enough demand shaping to shift night time loads to day time, and we don’t have enough storage to shift production to overnight. The result is that daytime generation is regularly going into negative rates (you have to pay to put power on the grid, which melts the returns on your investment into solar.
As far as problems go, it’s a good one to have, as it will eventually result in lower prices for daytime generation.
Isn’t A/C a huge power consumer though? And because most lights are led now, except for northern countries the day time would be higher energy use right?
We have incentivized night time consumption. Base load generation (nuclear, coal) can’t ramp up and down fast enough to match the daily demand curve. They can’t produce more than the minimum overnight demand, but they have keep producing that around the clock. To minimize the need for “peaker” plants during the day, they want the overnight demand to be as high as possible.
So they put steel mills, aluminum smelters, and other heavy industry on overnight shifts by offering them extraordinarily cheap power.
That incentivized overnight load needs to be shifted to daytime, so it can be met with solar and wind. Moving forward, we need to minimize overnight demand.
