☀️⚡️ Everyone in Switzerland agrees we need more solar. But often, there's disagreement about where to put the panels without impacting the landscapes too much.

🛤️ Looking back, this one is a no-brainer, why not lay them down between train rails: there's already a strong connection to the grid, and it's infrastructure that's already ‘built’.

🇨🇭 First segment of the tracks got inaugurated today in canton Neuchâtel.

https://www.rts.ch/info/regions/neuchatel/2025/article/la-premiere-centrale-solaire-sur-rails-a-ete-inauguree-dans-le-canton-de-neuchatel-28863275.html
Supplier: https://www.sun-ways.ch

#Solar #Trains #Railways

@fj it's cute but even if you did all of it, 3800 km of standard gauge at 1.4mish wide with an energy density of roughly 100 W/m² gives you about 500 MW of power total, i.e. 10% of current (tiny) Swiss solar capacity.

You could get the same capacity by converting 0.03%(!) of Swiss agricultural land to solar.

@ives I'm not really convinced by roof solar, it's cute and fun, but installing solar on farmland is much cheaper and you can get an added ecological benefit by rewilding the land quite significantly, seeding meadows beneath and around the panels

https://solarenergyuk.org/news/wildlife-found-thriving-on-solar-farms/ (it's from an industry group, so take with a pinch of salt, but look at how gorgeous those meadows are...)

@fj

@bovine3dom Rewilding isn't even necessary if you put up vertical both-sided agrivoltaic panels oriented north to south: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agrivoltaics

@ives @fj