This idea makes a thousand times more sense because they’re not trying to replace the load-bearing surface with an expanse of expensive and delicate glass, they’re just filling in otherwise unused space
You know what makes more sense? Putting them on homes. Solar railways are a pointless attempt at some money from the company involved. They are not practical.
I agree we should be putting solar panels on roofs. I disagree that this railway solar idea is impractical. If this article is to be believed they have already demonstrated effective operation at pilot scale. They mentioned some challenges specific to this application, but they also seem to have compensated for them
The challenges are what makes them impractical. The company has investment it needs to repay, so it obviously wants to tell you it’s not a big deal. It’s much more cost efficient and solar efficient to install them on roofs of homes and building, create shelters from them, or simply just make a field of them. Things like “solar railways” should be a last resort, after we have already covered the obvious solutions.
I don’t think it’s a slam dunk case. There’s lots of costs associated with installing solar on a roof that may not apply here. I think someone would have to do a comparative lifecycle analysis
This one makes a lot of sense though. You have a built in way to clean the panels through the trains, the panels are protected by the rails, and theoretically nothing should be putting weight on them (in practice the weight of a human or maybe a cow - at most)
Plus railroads last a very long time. Basically until we rip them up
We don’t need a solution to transition away from fossil fuels, we need lots of solutions. We really should be putting up solar panels anywhere and everywhere they will survive for at least a few years. Even if it’s 70% as productive as a properly angled panel, so what? We don’t need to min max here
We need production ramped up and capacity online as fast as possible. If solar railways become a new source of demand, that means more investment in both
Instead they just put it in a place where they have to be disconnected and removed to reballast or tamp the permanent way, or for railhead grinding, or for sleeper replacement, or for any maintenance task that needs access between the tracks…
Yeah by a long shot. Railroads spend 1-3% of the capital cost on maintenance. So if it cost $3 million to build a km of track they spend roughly $30-90k/year. It might not look like it since tracks are just kind of always “there” but there is a decent amount of work you need to do pretty much constantly.
The stones underneath the tracks and sleepers is called ballast and it needs to be rough, angular rock of a certain size. It’s an engineered fill material that’s designed to lock together and hold the rails in place. Every train that passes by does a couple of things at once. It cyclically loads the ballast and breaks down those sharp edges that lock it together. At the same time the force of the wheels on the rails contributes to fatigue causing microcracks to form on the rail surface.
If you leave rails unmaintained long enough (by gross tonnage BTW. Rail can last a long time if it’s hardly used at all) the track will start pumping, where it compresses and expands as each axle passes over it. You’ll start lifting the subsoil up into the ballast ruining its ability to hold the track in alignment even more. Also, microcracks can combine enough that the railhead begins spalling and eventually the cracks can combine enough that the rail itself can fracture well before it’s service life tonnage.
To fix this you have to tamp ballast every X number of tons, grind the railhead every Y tons, and replace the ballast every Z tons .etc
Basically every part of the permanent way is some kind of wear item that needs maintenance. Mind you, only mainline track needs to be perfect. As long as speed limits are low enough along with an inspection, you can run on degraded secondary rails or spurs safely. It just wears it out even faster.
I have seen these hulking machines sitting on the tracks sometimes, I think the manufacturer might be “comaco” - is that what does the tamping/grinding/replacing?
There’s a huge variety. Grinding trains usually travel at around 15-30km/h (depending on what model of grinder, how badly the rails need to be ground) and it looks like what Hollywood thinks an emergency brake application looks like
This level of cleaning is expensive… Normal freight lines don’t need this level of replacement except maybe every 10-20 years. But they do need their ballast tamped every so often to make sure you compact voids and re-lock ballast together.
The article mentions reinforcing the panels and also adding “brooms” to the underside of the trains. I don’t know how it will shake out but it’s possible with the brooms they get cleaned more regularly than rooftop ones. Perhaps it will be important to leave gaps so that rocks and train parts can fall down between them as they are swept off (thus hopefully limiting damage to a single panel)
I got some very interesting information from someone who seems to be quite experienced in railway matters in another part of this thread.
I have learned that this gap in the rails is much more ‘busy’ then I originally assumed.
Either way I frankly think we should put solar panels just about everywhere. I don’t think the current limiting factor is panel supply, I think it’s instalation bottlenecks but I could be mistaken
solar fricken railroads?
This idea makes a thousand times more sense because they’re not trying to replace the load-bearing surface with an expanse of expensive and delicate glass, they’re just filling in otherwise unused space
You know what makes more sense? Putting them on homes. Solar railways are a pointless attempt at some money from the company involved. They are not practical.
I agree we should be putting solar panels on roofs. I disagree that this railway solar idea is impractical. If this article is to be believed they have already demonstrated effective operation at pilot scale. They mentioned some challenges specific to this application, but they also seem to have compensated for them
The challenges are what makes them impractical. The company has investment it needs to repay, so it obviously wants to tell you it’s not a big deal. It’s much more cost efficient and solar efficient to install them on roofs of homes and building, create shelters from them, or simply just make a field of them. Things like “solar railways” should be a last resort, after we have already covered the obvious solutions.
I don’t think it’s a slam dunk case. There’s lots of costs associated with installing solar on a roof that may not apply here. I think someone would have to do a comparative lifecycle analysis
This one makes a lot of sense though. You have a built in way to clean the panels through the trains, the panels are protected by the rails, and theoretically nothing should be putting weight on them (in practice the weight of a human or maybe a cow - at most)
Plus railroads last a very long time. Basically until we rip them up
We don’t need a solution to transition away from fossil fuels, we need lots of solutions. We really should be putting up solar panels anywhere and everywhere they will survive for at least a few years. Even if it’s 70% as productive as a properly angled panel, so what? We don’t need to min max here
We need production ramped up and capacity online as fast as possible. If solar railways become a new source of demand, that means more investment in both
Think a little harder.
Instead they just put it in a place where they have to be disconnected and removed to reballast or tamp the permanent way, or for railhead grinding, or for sleeper replacement, or for any maintenance task that needs access between the tracks…
I certainly have never done maintenance on railroad tracks. Do you think that’s more frequent than maintenance that needs to be done on rooftops?
Yeah by a long shot. Railroads spend 1-3% of the capital cost on maintenance. So if it cost $3 million to build a km of track they spend roughly $30-90k/year. It might not look like it since tracks are just kind of always “there” but there is a decent amount of work you need to do pretty much constantly.
The stones underneath the tracks and sleepers is called ballast and it needs to be rough, angular rock of a certain size. It’s an engineered fill material that’s designed to lock together and hold the rails in place. Every train that passes by does a couple of things at once. It cyclically loads the ballast and breaks down those sharp edges that lock it together. At the same time the force of the wheels on the rails contributes to fatigue causing microcracks to form on the rail surface.
If you leave rails unmaintained long enough (by gross tonnage BTW. Rail can last a long time if it’s hardly used at all) the track will start pumping, where it compresses and expands as each axle passes over it. You’ll start lifting the subsoil up into the ballast ruining its ability to hold the track in alignment even more. Also, microcracks can combine enough that the railhead begins spalling and eventually the cracks can combine enough that the rail itself can fracture well before it’s service life tonnage.
To fix this you have to tamp ballast every X number of tons, grind the railhead every Y tons, and replace the ballast every Z tons .etc
Basically every part of the permanent way is some kind of wear item that needs maintenance. Mind you, only mainline track needs to be perfect. As long as speed limits are low enough along with an inspection, you can run on degraded secondary rails or spurs safely. It just wears it out even faster.
An American rail section that last saw maintenance when reagan was elected
Fascinating!
I have seen these hulking machines sitting on the tracks sometimes, I think the manufacturer might be “comaco” - is that what does the tamping/grinding/replacing?
There’s a huge variety. Grinding trains usually travel at around 15-30km/h (depending on what model of grinder, how badly the rails need to be ground) and it looks like what Hollywood thinks an emergency brake application looks like
Track POV of a grinding train
They usually have a water tender at the end with a water cannon to spray down fires started by the grinding train itself.
Railway ballast cleaning to remove fines and tamp
This level of cleaning is expensive… Normal freight lines don’t need this level of replacement except maybe every 10-20 years. But they do need their ballast tamped every so often to make sure you compact voids and re-lock ballast together.
Sleeper replacement
Incredible videos
rocks, sand, parts, snow, ice all land between those tracks.
The article mentions reinforcing the panels and also adding “brooms” to the underside of the trains. I don’t know how it will shake out but it’s possible with the brooms they get cleaned more regularly than rooftop ones. Perhaps it will be important to leave gaps so that rocks and train parts can fall down between them as they are swept off (thus hopefully limiting damage to a single panel)
or just put panels on flat top buildings and cover parking lots.
I got some very interesting information from someone who seems to be quite experienced in railway matters in another part of this thread.
I have learned that this gap in the rails is much more ‘busy’ then I originally assumed.
Either way I frankly think we should put solar panels just about everywhere. I don’t think the current limiting factor is panel supply, I think it’s instalation bottlenecks but I could be mistaken