Lol for all the reasons in the video. Also, in the U.K., trains have grit dispensers that deposit it on the rails by the wheels when needed to improve traction, e.g. wet or ice on the rail. And almost every week here there are weekend line closures for maintenance. They have to do a lot in a very limited time windows and now they would have to factor in dealing with the panels too.
You also forgot that you have panels costing 4 figures each just sitting there, in the open. Unguarded, no one around for a hundred kilometres, no camera's.
I’m just imagining a minor mechanical failure that leads to a rod or something dropping between the rails but remaining attached and just wiping out millions of dollars worth of panels in one journey.
You don't even need a failure for that! It can happen during normal opetation! Just a medium sized branch fallen from a nearby tree can get stuck in break line hoses or electric cables and here you go bashing everything between the tracks at high speed without the driver even noticing anything until the train arrives and the next routine inspection is done.
German acoustics engineer here who has done research in sound emission of train wheels. 1st: when a train passes by... Forget the dust. There are stones flying around! 2nd: when the wheels roll over they deform themselves and the rail so that they form a contact zone of a few millimeters in size. The forces are just crazy. This zone is able to transfer acoustic energy really well. If they press the panels in as shown.... Even if they use some rubber.. they get shaken through well. 3rd the wheels are not just flat on the bottom. They have a special shape so that the train does not derail. Therefore they create outward force on the rails. Not sure how long their system will stay in place at all.
Just let us for a second ignore the fact that there are stones flying around, let's just for the giggles think, there would be some kind of "gorilla glass" that could handle that, and maybe they would make the panels not covered from glass but as a form of a foil like the flexible panels you could get nowadays for some camping purposes. (Yes, of course I do know that the flexible panes don't have the efficiency, they would not be targeted directly for the sun to get efficient sunlight, and and and... But just let's do this suggestions that it would be possible). You know how the stones or the sand around the rails is changing it's colour to some red-ish or even black colour. That would happen to the panels as well if they would not get cleaned and polished up again and again every few days or at least weeks. Who would do that and how on a string of several 100 kilometers? Plus, how would all the electricity, being produced on such a long string, get transported to where it is needed? No, you won't do that by using the rails itself, would you? (Put some sticker on the rails saying: "Don't step the rails for being under high voltage"? And ban all trains from that rails as their wheels would short the segments! )
Here in Brazil, a well-known chronicler called Nelson Rodrigues used to say, back in the 70s, that "Idiots are going to take over the world, not because of their capacity, but because of their quantity. There are many of them"
he was wrong only in thinking idiots were going to take over in the future, they already run the show, its only thanks to a proportionally tiny segment of any population who have the skills and intelligence to keep things ticking along.
@@hartmutvonknallundzubumm9073 you are mistaken, most people have *never* possessed that ability, and this has been known and documented for *over* 2000 years at the least.
Alright, now hear me out on this one, how about: Solar Freakin' Runways! Think about how much sunlight hits runways at airports! Planes landing on solar panels is the future!
Funny enough, Solar Freakin' Taxiways is a smarter idea than either of these. At least then you can build strips along the taxiways where most planes will never apply pressure from the landing gear (in fact, we are even going to create a mechanism where the panels are automatically elevated such that they are just below the average height of wings, but higher than the ground to prevent debris from engine blast from kicking over them. Ignoring the dangers of glare 50 yards to the right of a runway you are trying to set a 777 down on... And the myriad of other issues. I think we are ready to goto the government for a grant. We have already put more thought into this that any of these other solar***ways crowds.
I have an engineer friend who went to a green energy event in Germany where the government was handing out contracts like candy. There were only 2 projects that had any materials sourcing, data or charts to show. The rest were literal snake oil salesmen. Guess who got the contracts?
Yes, I'm from germany and that is 100% what is happening over here. Everyone here (except for me) has gone stupid. Looks like media and politics are actively making people stupid on purpose. For example: After the war in Ukraine started we just pumped a big amount of money into the military. But that wouldn't make a difference as Nato is already 100 times stronger than Russia conventionally and with the money spent we will only be 100.3 times stronger than Russia. And if it comes to nuclear war, the world will be destroyed with or without the extra money. It will be missing in other parts of socienty, though. Fewer teachers, policemen and doctors will lead to 10,000 extra deaths (according to a formular in economics).
It's human nature, of course people will be there to take advantage. The governments are full on panicking over climate change and of course governments being governments they act like the solution is to just throw taxpayer money at anyone with a harebrained scheme and the ability to slick talk. Panic never yields good solutions, so maybe the world needs to take a step back instead of losing their minds. After all, the running around with your hair on fire is creating a lot of CO2 emissions...
So the plan is to file for bankruptcy? In a Ltd. (GmbH on germany) the owners should still be responsible for gambling away the money. Trying to get aqay with Embezzlement seems like a terrible business proposal.
Incoming Solar Drones! Increasing efficiency by 831% by tracking the sun! Even across the globe! Imagine 24/7 in sunlight! No, we didn't pull that specific number out of our ass, why would you even ask that? The government didn't ask that...
Just to get the record straight about the vibration Dave mentioned: I live in a small town in the west of Germany. We have a railway track running through the town. I live about 500m away from the railway rack with 2 streets with houses and trees between us and the railway. It is far enough that you don’t hear the trains, when our windows are closed. But if the heavy trains from the steel factory in our neighbor town come through once a day, the glasses in our kitchen cupboard are shaking! And, as you know, we build very solid houses in Germany.
yah living in Finland about 600m from a railway track, only cargo tough, and not too often. But about couple years ago there was a huge issue of some old russian train carts being used and going trough here with wheels that were pretty much oval. Everything shook and you could hear the clanking, it was insane.
They could also put USB charging sockets in the railway track, in regular intervals, like every 3m, so we could all socialize next to the tracks and charge our phones. Endless potential 😅
It's not just bad for the panels it also makes basic track maintenance a headache. It's not unusual for the spikes or spring clips to work lose. A crew or single man shows up and manually hammers it back together or uses a track mounted machine to do the same. Now imagine having to disconnect and roll up a length of panels and then put it all back in place just to knock a spike back in. Something that previously took a couple of minutes now takes an hour. Well done.
An hour? That's being generous. Considering these are electrical components and attached to the grid there'd be all sorts of precautions that need to be taken and that might take a day to get clearance to do the work.
Last time I was on a train in Germany I was surprised when I flushed the toilet it opened onto the tracks below. I had to google to see what the latest is and found this. Some trains in the Netherlands and Switzerland feature composting toilets. These toilets use bacterial action to break down solid and liquid waste. Broken down clean liquid is released onto the track beds after being sterilized, while the solid waste only has to be emptied every half year.
Watch the little animation of the panel laying train again, and while watching it just think "how are the panels stored inside that container?". I mean, they come out the front of the container in a seemingly endless chain through a hatch in the floor magically.
First downside is that you often get dragging parts on trains, so you will absolutely get the panels being destroyed by the first train that is dragging a coupler. Also sleepers are designed, along with many of the cars, to provide the clearance for things like bottom discharge cars, so the panels cannot be installed without relaying the rails, unless you have an alternate route to send cars that are correct dimension for rail transit. Easier to actually use the existing pylons, and add on a simple frame to the top to join the pylons, to support the panels above the rails, and also get easy access to the existing power infrastructure along the rails.
@@IanScottJohnston Hey, the train laying them probably will have a dropped coupler, so breaking them before they even see light for the first time. The USA rail system has automatic checkers, that both check for hot boxes, and for dragging, along with identifying boxcars with open doors, and these have been around for decades, so it is a big enough problem to have this in place. remember a locked axle can destroy a lot of track very fast, and cost millions to replace.
While I don’t disagree with the ultimate conclusion, the clearance argument is completely false, at least in Switzerland: railway road crossings here have the pavement up to the same height as the rails. Consequently, trains have to be designed under the assumption that there is no space whatsoever below the top of the rails.
Dust is no problem. You just require each train to drive on it to mount a big broom at the last wagon, so it cleans up the panels after passing them...^^
They couldn't put solar panels on my roof, it vibrates too much from me laughing at your videos and yelling about how these marketing guys are bad! Thanks for your videos
Solar parking lots are the way to go. Especially here in the southern US. I'm talking overhead solar. You get shaded parking along with a bunch of square meters of solar panels. My work has them in the parking lot. It should be the standard.
Perhaps 100% of Switzerland's energy can come from attaching a solar panel to Mr. Scuderi's head with all his bright ideas... + Bonus: Thick skull = vibration dampening
I think it’s good to let people steal the panels from the railway and put them on there rooftops. No panels can get damaged and the efficiency get way up. Win-win situation!
Swiss railways use track circuits for tracking (pun not intended) which bit of the rail is occupied by a train. If those arms used to lock the Solar Freaking Rail panels in place aren't well insulated they'll short the track circuit in every block they're attached to and bring the entire line to a halt because the system will think there's a train sitting in every block. EDIT: I just remembered that this would never be feasible in London. Parts of the Underground actually go above ground, and they use a fourth rail located right in the middle of the four foot, used for current return. Right where these panels are supposed to go.
The trains that go across America carrying coal end up an average of 4 -17 tons lighter at the destination from all the coal dust they lost during the journey. The coal in the train cars can't be covered due to the danger of combustion. (source "From The Ashes" documentary).
@@AaronCMounts ok, but the point still stands - you have 10 trains going across every so often, and some of that dust falls on these stupid panels - who's cleaning them?
Trains at speed create huge air pressure wave in front of them and a significant under pressure beneath. When I saw that dinky suspension mounting I could not stop from laughing out loud. I imagined the cloud solar panel debris following the train engine as the pressure differential rips the panels out of their mount and smashes them at the underside of the train. 😂
I had the same thought. The first train thats going faster than an old lady in the church aisle will shred the panels into silica gel pellets and broken dreams. But who cares? The money will be long gone.
I love how the trains, tracks, ties and ballast depicted in their 3D animation are looking so pristine. Everything is *so clean* ! The rails are literally gleaming, polished bare metal.
I was waiting for this video. I'm not disappointed. I love how the brackets short the rails sending the signals to a red aspect. Unlike the road authorities, the railways employ electrical engineers who won't allow them within a mile of an operating railway.
@@MarcoTedaldi ehh, if its a fight between gov officials and the electrical safety guys, im leaning on the safety guys, they can be worse than bureaucrats, mostly because they are next level bureaucrats.
@@TheUglyGnome when it comes to railways and the UK you have to bear in mind that they suffer greatly from being first, often by decades from other railways around the world.
Swiss resident here: -most trains here now have closed “bioreactor” toilets, but some old rolling stock with outhouse-on-wheels lavatories still exist.- EDIT: the last ones were phased out in 2018, so all Swiss train toilets are either bioreactor or simply collect in a tank like an airplane lavatory.
All other obvious issues aside, theft is going to be a _massive_ one here. You have floating panels connected via hinges, all you need is a drift pin and a hammer, or just a grinder, maybe even a bolt cutter as a pair of snips depending on what they're actually doing with case design, then some insulated snips for any wires. The panels are essentially free if you don't get caught. With the securing mechanism being designed the way it is, you could take a hammer to those pins and take an entire bundle in one go; though this also brings up the question of how long a set is, the animation suggests they're infinitely long due to how they tesselate with a series of panels before a retaining block. Of course you also need a way to transport them, they probably roll up nicely but you probably need winch or a lift to put them into the bed of a truck; getting them off the track is less of a concern, roll up a section and just tip it over, I'd imagine the sections are limited to the height of a shipping container, which is what the animation seems to depict, though damaging the panels is also a concern. Although the coils wouldn't seemingly be very long due to the length of the panels themselves, bend radius and all, and a serpentine line within the container doesn't work for the same reason; the only way the system makes sense is to have separate panels assemble into the chain before they're dropped on the tracks, this would optimize storage within the car due to the sizing of the panels. And that last point is where this goes from a stupid idea to vaporware, the concept just realistically does not operate due to physical constraints, even in the most optimized system you're going to need an entire cargo train's worth of cars just to lay a decent length of Sun-Ways. I won't really get into it because it'd entirely be speculation, but I have a feeling each section is 25 meters, with two sections per car if you notice how panels are coming out of the center of the car, which would mean 100 meters for the two car render which also matches nicely with the initial 300-foot project. But if you think about it, each container can roughly have an 8x2 grid of stacked panels by just hand measuring the animation, assuming a mechanism where they can go from storage to being part of the panel chain, and if each panel is roughly a meter in length, that's a _lot_ of wasted space within those containers, so more reason to believe this is vaporware because things don't logically add up in the slightest. If this project doesn't become vaporware, I really want to see the inside of one of these cars, just to see what the hell they're actually doing.
switzerland is not such a shithole. we had a theft here in our 4000-peeps-town, every single neighbor got the license plate number of the robbers, 15 minutes later they were greeted at home by the police…
Rails also sag when a heavy train rolls over and different bits of rail sag more or less. A lot of panels would just crack from the forces trying to bend them when the very first train passes over I think.
Mate, what a bloody brilliant idea. Solar panels on the rooftop ... of the _trains_. No need to worry about damage from passing trains and even better still, if they are mounted on a passenger train they'll get cleaned when the train is run through the wash shed. This is going to earn me a fortune!
@@j.f.christ8421 Ah yes, but this is where the sheer cunningness of my plan comes into action. My panels don't just run the train, they are also wired into the grid so any excess earns feed-in tariff too!
The Dutch railways used to sell a special cleaner to get the dust from the train break pads off your car if you parked next to the track. They'll have to chisel that dust off the panels' glass.
@@ofcourseofcoursebutmaybe Generally the brake disks, afaik the most common method due to brake blocks damaging the wheels too much, are made of cast iron or steel (maybe ceramic depending on scenario). So the dust they spread around is metal dust and dust from the ballast, which is generally rich in quartz. Afaik that mixture of metal and quartz is an annoying type of dust to deal with.
1) If anything similar to hook below train catches a single panel than a chain of panels will pile out below the train. In extreme case, it might derail the train. You negotiate anything except security. 2) During first winter all panels will be removed by snow plow. 3) Panels will distort rainfall-water, more at sides than in the middle. Possible result is soil sinking at sides and accelerated corrosion of steel rails. There won't be any wind or sunlight at lower side of panels, it may be permanently wet. Possible results include corrosion, growth of vegetation, expansion of ice.
I have an idea! Why don't they put PV panels in old salt mines! They will be safe from hail storms and will never get covered with snow! I need to get a patent!
Interesting, but I won't be able to help fund it. You see, I'm busy with the pioneering new technology of deep sea solar panels. This will be a real conversation starter!
I love the ending, where you put the idea into perspective. It really shows how you should do a comparison of pros and cons vs other existing solutions if you are considering something innovative. It's really a 101 on product development / innovation.
Wow that ballast cleaning machine looks really cool, I had wondered how they serviced the track beds these days. Navies with shovels would take forever.
Floating solar panels on the sewers are not revolutionary enough - just let them float straight up in the open seas. We can even cover whole oceans with solar panels! What can possibly go wrong? And if it does not work then i is clearly because you have not used enough solar panels.
An other issue is the high voltage used for electric trains (some systems have 25kV between overhead line and rails) along with the high transients fields when a train passes. Signal lines running along train tracks usually have multiple separate isolated metal shields to prevent induced charge damaging the signaling system. Electrically isolating solar panels in the train tracks is going to be a nightmare... along side all the other nightmarish issues this idea has.
The part of two things solar panels hate the most reminded me of a common issue with people and saunas. Lots of people want to bring electronics into a sauna, a place that is hot and wet, when the two things electronics hate the most are heat and moisture.
ME guy here. The vibration through the tracks could be dampened through the coupling mechanisms but it would make the system cost prohibitive from the life cycle perspective. Solar barely pays for itself as it is if at all. But then you are still dealing with wake turbulence from the air flow under the train. Particles caught in the turbulence would sand blast the panels.
When you showed the site and the surrounding areas, I laughed my ass off. Like you suggested, any one of the larger surrounding buildings would surely have more real estate for panels than a stretch of tracks! This is nuttery.
Let alone not having to invent tech to put the panels down, reduce vibration on the panels and allow for them to be removed. Just get a government grant call up the local solar installers whack a series of panels on the roofs of these places and sell the power back to those in the community and walk away with a win and a stack of government money.
You could in theory put beefy springs on those locking arms to offset that. Points, bends, and various bits of equipment in the four foot are a concern, since the system they show only works for straight track. Also springs probably wouldn't help with the vibration issues that much and they'd better be well insulated or they'll short the track circuits.
Which is why the tracks are designed with spacing to count for that. Tracks in Europe tend to be from the future compared to US as trains typically travel at 200kmh easy between cities. It’s a stupid idea anyways, but tracks bending isn’t one of reasons.
As some one who lives in Switzerland for recent several years, I can tell that you can't use random field for solar panels - they are used as farm lands most of the time. Those you've showed likely have cows and sheep most of the year, or they are now just resting for a year or so but they'll grow grain there. But that's a small correction just about fields. But other than that - yeah, you sure should put solar panels not on the roads (or rail roads) :)
The amount of grime and that between rail tracks is crazy. Also if the panels can be layed and picked up that easily whats to stop one from coming loose due to the vibration and catching on the bottom of the rail causing a derailment. The only thing that company got right is that there is plenty of rail infrastructure that could be used to hold solar panels. Station and other building roofs. For electrified lines you could put them on the gantrys that hold up the overhead lines.
Solar panels on gantrys is probably a bad idea, due to difficulty of installation and maintenance (proximity to high voltage lines and rails would). If you'd want to put panels on railways, the tracks often have some clear zone next to them (preventing trees from falling on the tracks), and they often have some kind of service road and grid connections at regular intervals. But it's so much simpler and cheaper to install panels near the consumers (large roofs/parking lots of industrial/commercial buildings) or in a easy-to-install locations, such as empty fields near existing electrical infrastructure.
There is also all of the lubricating grease and oil from the moving machinery dripping onto the track. Plus the signalling system if using track circuits must have the two tracks isolated so the mounting studs on these panels would need to be isolated from each other.
Another thing: the rails are used for signalling. Essentially a current is sent out through one rail and then returns through the other, and the wheels of the train are used to short across the two rails and the change in current flow lets the system know that a train is present in that section. So I wonder how the fasteners for the panels would interfere with that? Because if they made it all metal that might pose an issue
Fun fact: in some countries the train toilets work by just dumping the waste water onto the tracks. Let's not forget that the solar panels will likely interfere with train protection equipment (Eurobalise, LZB Wires, etc) and all the other stuff that you can find in the tracks (axle counters, defect detecors, track circuits used to detect the presence of a train, etc). Also this stuff would turn the lives of track maintenance crews into absolute hell for multiple reasons. Want to wash the bed? sorry, we first need to wait for the company to send one of their super fancy solar panel remover trains, wash the bed, put the solar stuff back on. I am also not quire sure how compatible it is with existing track inspection trains ("rail lab"). Also, there might be some issues when trains use their eddy current brakes or use their sand dispensers (they spray sand on the tracks to create more friction)
Do they know where the refuse goes when an Amtrak toilet gets flushed? BTW, I picked up used eight 10 Watt PV panels at a ham swap for $3 each because they were covered with so much crud it was very difficult to even know what they were. After a good long cleaning with 3M green pads I noted that they had been stamped the property of a railroad company. Even the ground 20 feet away from a RR track vibrates when a train goes by.
There are places where you can put your hand on a wall of a building and feel the vibration whenever a train comes by from at least kilometer away. You can barely hear the trains but you can feel how everything is shaking.
Heheheh! While _most_ trains in Switzerland now have self-contained “bioreactor” toilets, there is still some old rolling stock with the “hole in the floor” style lavatories…
It is a myth that train and aircraft toilets just flush sewage out a hole in the bottom. Might have happened back in the 1800's but not on modern trains.
Wireless power transmittion is generally very inefective but there is a solution! Just snap your trusty old Batteroo Batterizers on the panels to compensate for the lost enegry and you are golden!
I had someone trying to say that it was still a better idea to wirelessly charge your car because the "cables wouldn't wear out". As if there's some epidemic of cables failing. These people are delusional.
There is definitely a good place for solar panels at railroad. It is the roof over train station. Easily accessible, can store power for night lamps,... But between rails? That sounds like super stupid idea. And I don't know much about rail, but I traveled by train a lot. Once there was some maintenance and they put there new rocks. Nice, white/black rock (I guess it was granite, but I don't know for sure). In a month or so, none of those rocks were shiny. In two or three months they had this classic look of "railroad rocks", that dark-brown, kinda like brown coal or iron ore. Like unpolished hematit. Or like everything was covered in fine iron dust... I also do not know much about solar panels, but don't you want them as clean as possible? Maybe I'm wrong, but I always thought that you need light to get in the panel to make electricity and if the front part is covered in dust, rust, oil and whatnot, it will not work, right?
We already have solar railways: It's common to see little panels near the lines to power non-critical monitoring and signalling equipment, because it's cheaper than building a power supply that can hook up to the third rail voltages or running cables from the nearest substation.
Not to mention derailment. Derailment can cause serious incidents like a train wreck. Those are rare. But minor derailment are fairly common. The wheel of a wagon goes off the track and goes on for kilometers before the problem is noticed and corrected. If you had solar panel between the tracks, you now have shatter glass and potentially hazardous beams of metals which could increase the risk of a train wreck.
Just had a derailment near where I live, a very empty rural area in a northern state. Heard it was a problem with hard ice built up on the rail. Locomotive had its front wheels about a foot or two off to the right, off the rails. Guess where the front left wheels landed? Of course solar PV isn't a good idea in cold high latitude places anyway.
@@koma-k In the US, we still use wooden "sleepers" (we call them "ties"), but most major rail lines are starting to be replaced with concrete, especially passenger railways.
Oh for crying out loud. Dust, dirt, vibration - you hit the nail right on the head, unless we're talking defunct railways. But then it's still waaaaaaaay better to have a solar farm with panels all close to each other and the inverters, avoiding voltage drops in cables that would run too long. But hey, that's how the world is gonna look like if the visionaries or entrepreneurs aren't engineers or don't ask them first... Like we say here in Poland, it's dumber than a shoe on your left foot. On the other hand, I like this way of laying the panels. This is genuinely interesting. As for that power coupling, maybe it's the wireless energy transfer rubbish again? Hitting two birds with one stone. Interesting under-track maintenance footage too!
Great shout out. Ignoring all the other craziness about this idea, those panel fixing rods look awfully like the train inner wheel flanges would contact them. From a quick search, the wheel flanges often go down to about 50% of the rail middle section. Can't see railway standards people approving that. Imagine the carnage if a wheel hit a fixing rod that then started flipping panels as a train went over.
I was about to post that. Ty for beating me to it. In the Netherlands there are problems with thieves stealing copper from the overhead electricity lines without getting electrocuted. They sell it as copper for a fraction of the price it takes them to replace. So I wonder if these panels will break before they are stolen. It's going to be a close call.
Do you know how much pressure a train puts on the tracks? The contact area of a railway carriage on the track is about half the size of the palm of your hand, and there’s 30-120 tonnes on that area (+ dynamic forces). It’s enough to crush leaves into lubricating graphite, and the track bends under that weight.
Rail also involves lots of grease and oil that finds its way to everything in the vicinity. BTW, are ALL marketing people sleazebags? There seems to be a trend...
I wish I could share some images from my train station, the rails and space between them are absolutely covered by metallic dust from the wheels and breaks, and usually, the dust creates some kind of stalagmite shape around the track except the very top of the rail which is in contact with wheels! perfect to short electronics and perfect to reduce the efficiency to nothing!
2:00 The trains in Canada also drains the toilet directly on the track and those rocks are full of sticky toxic oils and broken parts of very though metals train parts that failed after too much... vibrations!
There is a rail line nearby where I ride every month, here in the UK in a rural area, and even a dinky little solar panel they put on top of one of the signalling pylons looked like it had been sand-blasted to oblivion after only 4 months of existing, and this was with a (feeble, but still present) attempt at protecting the panel as weill with some kind of perspex offset "guard" that just got shattered to pieces How they expect panels to survive between the rails directly beign impacted with all that debris, never mind the shock loading of a 440 metric ton train hurtling along at 100+ mph, is beyond me, smarter ideas include fields bought for the railway to pass through being used for solar farms (like I have seen a couple of times here), putting solar panels on any existing infrastructure or putting gantries overhead to put solar panels in a proper place at least, not this idiocy Even if trhey had a wacky idea like putting solar panels on moving trains and then sending that energy back to the grid would be a "smarter" idea if they wanted to be "innovative", and something like that has a laundry list of issues I can think of already, never mind rehashing an already failed grift of solar roadways and going "I know, lets make it even more impossible"
They don't expect the panels to survive. They expect to be given lots of money to fail to develop a working system and then go bankrupt. They then expect to emerge with a new corporate identity and do it all again with a new idea.
Dave, look up thermite rail welding, I just saw one yesterday and they leave weld/slag on the inner vertical part of the track, so I guess they can’t lay it either. Haha.
I don't understand why these companies haven't targeted highway median strips. It's a large area where solar panels could be installed sensibly (i.e. elevated and tilted toward the sun) , but barely used. (I think there's a good system in South Korea, but could be mistaken.)
Actually solar panels on the outside edge of railway right of way isn’t horrible. Especially when used to run signals, crossing gates, and increased sensor deployment is a good idea. Now the key is elevation, because train maintenance would cause havoc. Rail grinders shower sparks to either side, ballast rock routinely gets flung to the side by trains, you get bits of dropped coal and junk from the trains, lots of rust and brake dust, etc. The worst thing to deal with is any area that gets snow. When a train hits or clears snow almost anything within 2 meters of the tracks gets a massive amount of force from the snow impact.
I'm glad I live in Canuckistan where most of the rail traffic is freight and this story of thing is unlikely (but don't tell our leaders). As usual, laying the panels flat reduces the efficiency to 30%. Snow would cover the panels for months at a time. Vibration and dust. I look forward to a followup report on the success or lack thereof.
Have you seen the amount of stones and oil that gathers on the sleepers ? LOL. I can see these shattering as soon as the first train rolls over them. :)
Railways are actually fantastic pieces of infrastructure. They go everywhere and are paid for and mostly in public hand. And the railways usually own a good chunks left and right of the track. So by all means, while you put in electrification install a solar power shade structure over the electrical lines. It would also help to keep the snow and leaves off the tracks. It's no surprise railways tend to be the biggest operator of glasfibres. Because they own those neat infrastructure corridors..
I followed back when the first solar roadway video came out. I can't believe almost 9 years later they are still doing it. I feel like I already know how this is going to end. xD
The idea of using the fixturing system of my doorframe pull-up bar to mount solar panels is inventive, I grant them that. But it also relies exactly on the deflection mode of the rails that is most intensive during traffic.
That was the first thing I pictured, the first time a train passes and put pressure on the tracks, they will try to spread and the "things" will all fall down. There's a reason tracks have sleepers between them.
You know, I always thought that solar panels would be suited for bring put beside the rails, not in between them, especially because of all of the land that has to be cleared around them anyway.
And the Korean solution over the allows the flat panels to be aimed in the right direction and tilted a bit for better angle of incidence to the sun... It's not tracking, but it beats flat on the ground. As the path meandered around, the panels appeared to have the same orientation the whole way through.
So many ways this is wrong but here''s one I don't think has been mentioned. Ever seen those track maintenance trains going past where the rails are being ground and reprofiled? Imagine all the iron dust and hot sparks being hurled at the panels and associated cabling when that goes on. ... and yes, toilets from passenger trains. Here in Queensland, Australia the close of the 1960s also saw the end of regular schedule steam locomotives. Even so the Sunlander (1950s era passenger train) continued to run until 2014 so it was still possible to encounter a giant steamer on the tracks ...
Some years ago we had the railroad nearby run a Track Grinder along the base of a bluff in the middle of summer, starting a string of fires that raced up the bluff toward houses. Of course the RR denied all responsibility and got sued by the city, probably settled after the coverage died down. Track grinders emit HUGE clouds of iron dust and sparks, I've seen one working at night.
Lol in the US you could set a stopwatch for how long the panels would last. 😂 Put fragile glass panels on tracks where thousand ton trains are running??
We have the largest coal port in the world in Newcastle, Australia, houses near the lines are covered in coal dust, these panels would be covered in no time. The massive trains shake the ground too, this is a crazy idea.
That's the first thing that came to my mind. I'd just wait for nightfall and then steal as many as possible before they got destroyed by normal railway use. I'd treat them much, much better.
Also imagine the damage a derailment can cause. 99% of derailments are just a single axle that comes off and gets dragged for many km. That would destroy millions of dollars of panels.
In France (and maybe in other countries in the world as well), there is a mean to send some signaling informations from track to train in the shape of big metal bars in the middle of the track, and the electric signal is picked up by a metal brush under the train. It's very stiff wires poking under the train right in the middle.... The block signaling train detection also work when an axle shorts both rails. I hope their studs are insulated or it would wreak havoc in signaling.... There's also... things that get dropped from passenger trains right in the middle of the track. Yup, toilet things XD I'm very surprised such a joke comes from Switzerland, they are very serious about railroading. Just look at this tiny little single tracked line, but it is electrified. And also they are not newcomers in renewable energy neither (mountains means lots of dams and hydro power).
My first thought when seeing those locking arms was "those had better be bloody well insulated or it'll short the track circuits and bring the line to a standstill because the automated system thinks there's a train just sitting in that block".
In a railroad we have vibration, impacts, dust, metallic fragments, oil, grease, and a sample of each and every product transported. This is when the composition is not stopped on the rails. It will certainly work! LOL
i like how someone points out a genuine critique and they respond with a "we have a thingamabob that would prevent that from happening". no addressing the fundamental design flaw, just a technology bandaid
Lol for all the reasons in the video. Also, in the U.K., trains have grit dispensers that deposit it on the rails by the wheels when needed to improve traction, e.g. wet or ice on the rail. And almost every week here there are weekend line closures for maintenance. They have to do a lot in a very limited time windows and now they would have to factor in dealing with the panels too.
Do not forget the leaves on the line as well.
And the toilets emptying down the middle.
not to mention, the jet of water from an RHTT would just instantly destroy it
And the thermite. Let's see the thermite hit the panels.
You also forgot that you have panels costing 4 figures each just sitting there, in the open.
Unguarded, no one around for a hundred kilometres, no camera's.
I have an even more betterer idea: Solar Freakin' Subways!
And solar-powered submarines, haha!
And solar freakin' wind turbines. 😅
All those dark coal mines that could have been illuminated by solar power. Could even put the panels on the helmets of the miners.
@@KeritechElectronics you can install them in place of the screen door!
For that application you need " Black mather panel "
I "love" how the train station itself doesn't even have solar panels on the roof.
naaah, thats not innovative enough
me thinks "lets build a canopy over the tracks at the station and put panels up there
@@jasonriddell Think for a moment, how will you run a train on a station canopy.
Rotterdam's central station in the Netherlands has this.
@@IUSSHistory dude he said one station in there most Modern city has solar pannels
I’m just imagining a minor mechanical failure that leads to a rod or something dropping between the rails but remaining attached and just wiping out millions of dollars worth of panels in one journey.
You don't even need a failure for that! It can happen during normal opetation! Just a medium sized branch fallen from a nearby tree can get stuck in break line hoses or electric cables and here you go bashing everything between the tracks at high speed without the driver even noticing anything until the train arrives and the next routine inspection is done.
Aren't there detector stations that check for this? Hot wheels, hot bearings, hanging equipment, etc
that is called economic stimulus :P
@@InsanePacoTaco yes, but not every 100m...
@@derkeksinator17 True. Something closer to every 5 or 10 km? That's a lot of destruction.
German acoustics engineer here who has done research in sound emission of train wheels.
1st: when a train passes by... Forget the dust. There are stones flying around!
2nd: when the wheels roll over they deform themselves and the rail so that they form a contact zone of a few millimeters in size. The forces are just crazy. This zone is able to transfer acoustic energy really well. If they press the panels in as shown.... Even if they use some rubber.. they get shaken through well.
3rd the wheels are not just flat on the bottom. They have a special shape so that the train does not derail. Therefore they create outward force on the rails. Not sure how long their system will stay in place at all.
Sleeperless tracks like they do in high speed and rapid transit viaducts?
Flying stones won't crack silica... right?...
Long shot but do you know the research with Alstom from TU Berlin? I saw a really interesting presentation at DAGA
Just let us for a second ignore the fact that there are stones flying around, let's just for the giggles think, there would be some kind of "gorilla glass" that could handle that, and maybe they would make the panels not covered from glass but as a form of a foil like the flexible panels you could get nowadays for some camping purposes. (Yes, of course I do know that the flexible panes don't have the efficiency, they would not be targeted directly for the sun to get efficient sunlight, and and and... But just let's do this suggestions that it would be possible). You know how the stones or the sand around the rails is changing it's colour to some red-ish or even black colour. That would happen to the panels as well if they would not get cleaned and polished up again and again every few days or at least weeks. Who would do that and how on a string of several 100 kilometers? Plus, how would all the electricity, being produced on such a long string, get transported to where it is needed? No, you won't do that by using the rails itself, would you? (Put some sticker on the rails saying: "Don't step the rails for being under high voltage"? And ban all trains from that rails as their wheels would short the segments! )
@@tay-lore My cars wind screen tells me otherwise, but I should perhaps put in a solar ways panel instead of a wind screen.
Here in Brazil, a well-known chronicler called Nelson Rodrigues used to say, back in the 70s, that "Idiots are going to take over the world, not because of their capacity, but because of their quantity. There are many of them"
he was wrong only in thinking idiots were going to take over in the future, they already run the show, its only thanks to a proportionally tiny segment of any population who have the skills and intelligence to keep things ticking along.
Way too many, and many people seem to have lost the ability to disprove a "good" idea from very "nice" guys.
@@hartmutvonknallundzubumm9073 you are mistaken, most people have *never* possessed that ability, and this has been known and documented for *over* 2000 years at the least.
Alright, now hear me out on this one, how about: Solar Freakin' Runways! Think about how much sunlight hits runways at airports! Planes landing on solar panels is the future!
Funny enough, Solar Freakin' Taxiways is a smarter idea than either of these. At least then you can build strips along the taxiways where most planes will never apply pressure from the landing gear (in fact, we are even going to create a mechanism where the panels are automatically elevated such that they are just below the average height of wings, but higher than the ground to prevent debris from engine blast from kicking over them. Ignoring the dangers of glare 50 yards to the right of a runway you are trying to set a 777 down on... And the myriad of other issues.
I think we are ready to goto the government for a grant. We have already put more thought into this that any of these other solar***ways crowds.
@@2009dudeman Keep me up to date how it goes.
And of course the flight decks of aircraft carriers = perfect places for solar panels!
I know it is ambitious and crazy, but hear me out, this will work. Solar Freakin's Transatlantic Shipping Lanes!
I have an engineer friend who went to a green energy event in Germany where the government was handing out contracts like candy. There were only 2 projects that had any materials sourcing, data or charts to show. The rest were literal snake oil salesmen. Guess who got the contracts?
Yes, I'm from germany and that is 100% what is happening over here. Everyone here (except for me) has gone stupid. Looks like media and politics are actively making people stupid on purpose. For example: After the war in Ukraine started we just pumped a big amount of money into the military. But that wouldn't make a difference as Nato is already 100 times stronger than Russia conventionally and with the money spent we will only be 100.3 times stronger than Russia. And if it comes to nuclear war, the world will be destroyed with or without the extra money. It will be missing in other parts of socienty, though. Fewer teachers, policemen and doctors will lead to 10,000 extra deaths (according to a formular in economics).
It's human nature, of course people will be there to take advantage. The governments are full on panicking over climate change and of course governments being governments they act like the solution is to just throw taxpayer money at anyone with a harebrained scheme and the ability to slick talk. Panic never yields good solutions, so maybe the world needs to take a step back instead of losing their minds. After all, the running around with your hair on fire is creating a lot of CO2 emissions...
🐍
The government just gives all these contracts to their mates. It doesn't matter what the idea is
So the plan is to file for bankruptcy? In a Ltd. (GmbH on germany) the owners should still be responsible for gambling away the money. Trying to get aqay with Embezzlement seems like a terrible business proposal.
Humanity's quest to do literally anything other than puting solar panels on empty sunny rooftops continues
Incoming Solar Drones! Increasing efficiency by 831% by tracking the sun! Even across the globe! Imagine 24/7 in sunlight! No, we didn't pull that specific number out of our ass, why would you even ask that? The government didn't ask that...
The quest to avoid producing clean, reliable, abundant energy with nuclear, you mean?
Humanity quest to do literally anything other than nuclear power.
@@user-vq6hl5li5m Fusion is fiction and there is not enough uranium to be main power sourse for more than a few decades.
Any chance you'd like to invest in Solar Freakin' Basements? You could get in on the ground floor!
Just to get the record straight about the vibration Dave mentioned: I live in a small town in the west of Germany. We have a railway track running through the town. I live about 500m away from the railway rack with 2 streets with houses and trees between us and the railway. It is far enough that you don’t hear the trains, when our windows are closed. But if the heavy trains from the steel factory in our neighbor town come through once a day, the glasses in our kitchen cupboard are shaking! And, as you know, we build very solid houses in Germany.
i live 1280m from a track and the light fixtures in my house rattle when a train goes by.
yah living in Finland about 600m from a railway track, only cargo tough, and not too often. But about couple years ago there was a huge issue of some old russian train carts being used and going trough here with wheels that were pretty much oval. Everything shook and you could hear the clanking, it was insane.
They could also put USB charging sockets in the railway track, in regular intervals, like every 3m, so we could all socialize next to the tracks and charge our phones. Endless potential 😅
It's not just bad for the panels it also makes basic track maintenance a headache. It's not unusual for the spikes or spring clips to work lose. A crew or single man shows up and manually hammers it back together or uses a track mounted machine to do the same. Now imagine having to disconnect and roll up a length of panels and then put it all back in place just to knock a spike back in. Something that previously took a couple of minutes now takes an hour. Well done.
An hour? That's being generous. Considering these are electrical components and attached to the grid there'd be all sorts of precautions that need to be taken and that might take a day to get clearance to do the work.
Not to mention the staff needed to address the high voltage of the equipment…
In certain countries the additional labor would be considered desirable employment security. 😊
I'd half expect them to suggest powering the train directly from the panels. As everyone who played with trains as a kid knows, trains run on 12V DC.
Last time I was on a train in Germany I was surprised when I flushed the toilet it opened onto the tracks below. I had to google to see what the latest is and found this. Some trains in the Netherlands and Switzerland feature composting toilets. These toilets use bacterial action to break down solid and liquid waste. Broken down clean liquid is released onto the track beds after being sterilized, while the solid waste only has to be emptied every half year.
Watch the little animation of the panel laying train again, and while watching it just think "how are the panels stored inside that container?".
I mean, they come out the front of the container in a seemingly endless chain through a hatch in the floor magically.
"Startup discovers that you can photoshop solar panels between railway tracks."
First downside is that you often get dragging parts on trains, so you will absolutely get the panels being destroyed by the first train that is dragging a coupler. Also sleepers are designed, along with many of the cars, to provide the clearance for things like bottom discharge cars, so the panels cannot be installed without relaying the rails, unless you have an alternate route to send cars that are correct dimension for rail transit.
Easier to actually use the existing pylons, and add on a simple frame to the top to join the pylons, to support the panels above the rails, and also get easy access to the existing power infrastructure along the rails.
Nah!, they'll not get destroyed.....they'll be stolen long before that.....:-)
@@IanScottJohnston Hey, the train laying them probably will have a dropped coupler, so breaking them before they even see light for the first time. The USA rail system has automatic checkers, that both check for hot boxes, and for dragging, along with identifying boxcars with open doors, and these have been around for decades, so it is a big enough problem to have this in place. remember a locked axle can destroy a lot of track very fast, and cost millions to replace.
You'd need to turn entire sections of track into big roadway crossings with no access to the sleepers or other parts.
The problem with pylons is that you must construct additional pylons
While I don’t disagree with the ultimate conclusion, the clearance argument is completely false, at least in Switzerland: railway road crossings here have the pavement up to the same height as the rails. Consequently, trains have to be designed under the assumption that there is no space whatsoever below the top of the rails.
You know you nailed it when Dave goes like "Solar Roadways is actually better"
Dust is no problem. You just require each train to drive on it to mount a big broom at the last wagon, so it cleans up the panels after passing them...^^
The air that a Train pushes ahead will keep the panels somewhat clean.
They couldn't put solar panels on my roof, it vibrates too much from me laughing at your videos and yelling about how these marketing guys are bad!
Thanks for your videos
Solar parking lots are the way to go. Especially here in the southern US. I'm talking overhead solar. You get shaded parking along with a bunch of square meters of solar panels. My work has them in the parking lot. It should be the standard.
Perhaps 100% of Switzerland's energy can come from attaching a solar panel to Mr. Scuderi's head with all his bright ideas...
+ Bonus: Thick skull = vibration dampening
I think it’s good to let people steal the panels from the railway and put them on there rooftops. No panels can get damaged and the efficiency get way up. Win-win situation!
free distribution of solar, nice.
This is hilarious! One dangling hose fitting or chain can destroy an entire run of these.
Swiss railways use track circuits for tracking (pun not intended) which bit of the rail is occupied by a train. If those arms used to lock the Solar Freaking Rail panels in place aren't well insulated they'll short the track circuit in every block they're attached to and bring the entire line to a halt because the system will think there's a train sitting in every block.
EDIT: I just remembered that this would never be feasible in London. Parts of the Underground actually go above ground, and they use a fourth rail located right in the middle of the four foot, used for current return. Right where these panels are supposed to go.
The more outraged Dave becomes the higher pitched his voice becomes so eventually only dogs can hear him.
this made me lol, haha
The trains that go across America carrying coal end up an average of 4 -17 tons lighter at the destination from all the coal dust they lost during the journey. The coal in the train cars can't be covered due to the danger of combustion. (source "From The Ashes" documentary).
Interesting
wow
This comment should have been couched in some relevant context. Coal trains across the USA carry an average of 13,000 tons of coal, each.
@@AaronCMounts So, ballpark they lose around 0.1%?
@@AaronCMounts ok, but the point still stands - you have 10 trains going across every so often, and some of that dust falls on these stupid panels - who's cleaning them?
Trains at speed create huge air pressure wave in front of them and a significant under pressure beneath. When I saw that dinky suspension mounting I could not stop from laughing out loud. I imagined the cloud solar panel debris following the train engine as the pressure differential rips the panels out of their mount and smashes them at the underside of the train. 😂
I had the same thought. The first train thats going faster than an old lady in the church aisle will shred the panels into silica gel pellets and broken dreams. But who cares? The money will be long gone.
Think Neo flying to catch Trinity 😂
I love how the trains, tracks, ties and ballast depicted in their 3D animation are looking so pristine. Everything is *so clean* ! The rails are literally gleaming, polished bare metal.
Until some rats start chewing the cables!
@@thanthanasiszamp4707 there are enough cable already on the tracks. rats seem to have a non-chew-agreement with the railroads.
The tracks in Switzerland are actually very clean. except for the rust where it is needed of course.
I was waiting for this video. I'm not disappointed.
I love how the brackets short the rails sending the signals to a red aspect.
Unlike the road authorities, the railways employ electrical engineers who won't allow them within a mile of an operating railway.
Sadly, it's politicians and managers and not engineers who decide such stuff... It's a shame!
@@MarcoTedaldi ehh, if its a fight between gov officials and the electrical safety guys, im leaning on the safety guys, they can be worse than bureaucrats, mostly because they are next level bureaucrats.
The rails flex as trains pass over so there's a good chance all the panels will crack after the first 70mph coal hauler
Any commuter train will flex the rails by at least 1 cm, no coal hauler necessary.
I wonder, was this project funded by Credit Suisse?
Exactly! This sounds exactly like the kind of dross Credit Suisse is always promoting to investors.
It could very well be true. Credit Suiss will fund these kind of virtue signaling ESG projects.
However, the roulette players at CS get their financial bonus program.
LOL 😂
Silicon Valley Bank
I don’t know about Switzerland, but in the U.K. many train toilets discharge directly onto the track.
Plus we have a lot of diesel trains which kick out a lot of soot and would coat them in no time.
Actually very few trains discharge onto the tracks in the UK these days and they are being phased out.
I knew The UK is a third world country after all, but discarding toilets on tracks? We haven't done that for decades even here in Soviet Finlandija.
@@TheUglyGnome when it comes to railways and the UK you have to bear in mind that they suffer greatly from being first, often by decades from other railways around the world.
Swiss resident here: -most trains here now have closed “bioreactor” toilets, but some old rolling stock with outhouse-on-wheels lavatories still exist.-
EDIT: the last ones were phased out in 2018, so all Swiss train toilets are either bioreactor or simply collect in a tank like an airplane lavatory.
All other obvious issues aside, theft is going to be a _massive_ one here. You have floating panels connected via hinges, all you need is a drift pin and a hammer, or just a grinder, maybe even a bolt cutter as a pair of snips depending on what they're actually doing with case design, then some insulated snips for any wires. The panels are essentially free if you don't get caught. With the securing mechanism being designed the way it is, you could take a hammer to those pins and take an entire bundle in one go; though this also brings up the question of how long a set is, the animation suggests they're infinitely long due to how they tesselate with a series of panels before a retaining block. Of course you also need a way to transport them, they probably roll up nicely but you probably need winch or a lift to put them into the bed of a truck; getting them off the track is less of a concern, roll up a section and just tip it over, I'd imagine the sections are limited to the height of a shipping container, which is what the animation seems to depict, though damaging the panels is also a concern. Although the coils wouldn't seemingly be very long due to the length of the panels themselves, bend radius and all, and a serpentine line within the container doesn't work for the same reason; the only way the system makes sense is to have separate panels assemble into the chain before they're dropped on the tracks, this would optimize storage within the car due to the sizing of the panels.
And that last point is where this goes from a stupid idea to vaporware, the concept just realistically does not operate due to physical constraints, even in the most optimized system you're going to need an entire cargo train's worth of cars just to lay a decent length of Sun-Ways. I won't really get into it because it'd entirely be speculation, but I have a feeling each section is 25 meters, with two sections per car if you notice how panels are coming out of the center of the car, which would mean 100 meters for the two car render which also matches nicely with the initial 300-foot project. But if you think about it, each container can roughly have an 8x2 grid of stacked panels by just hand measuring the animation, assuming a mechanism where they can go from storage to being part of the panel chain, and if each panel is roughly a meter in length, that's a _lot_ of wasted space within those containers, so more reason to believe this is vaporware because things don't logically add up in the slightest. If this project doesn't become vaporware, I really want to see the inside of one of these cars, just to see what the hell they're actually doing.
switzerland is not such a shithole. we had a theft here in our 4000-peeps-town, every single neighbor got the license plate number of the robbers, 15 minutes later they were greeted at home by the police…
Rails also sag when a heavy train rolls over and different bits of rail sag more or less. A lot of panels would just crack from the forces trying to bend them when the very first train passes over I think.
Has anyone suggested solar freaking rooftops? It seems like it would work better
Elon Musk stoll that idea from decades ago.
Nah, that’ll never work 😂
Mate, what a bloody brilliant idea. Solar panels on the rooftop ... of the _trains_. No need to worry about damage from passing trains and even better still, if they are mounted on a passenger train they'll get cleaned when the train is run through the wash shed. This is going to earn me a fortune!
@@retrozmachine1189 Too late dude! Byron Bay in Oz has a solar-powered train. Dave's even got a video of it somewhere.
@@j.f.christ8421 Ah yes, but this is where the sheer cunningness of my plan comes into action. My panels don't just run the train, they are also wired into the grid so any excess earns feed-in tariff too!
To avoid the snowy conditions, they start with the track through the tunnels. They have loads of them in Switzerland 😅.
Best Comment here!😂
hypersolarloop roadways
Finally a good idea! ;)
Maybe there were also some minor other root causes for them having their trains going through tunnels! 🤣😂
The Dutch railways used to sell a special cleaner to get the dust from the train break pads off your car if you parked next to the track. They'll have to chisel that dust off the panels' glass.
Had some of that dust on my car when I parked it (about 25 years ago) under the raised rail-track in Delft. That dust turned out to be a keeper......
@@DreadX10 so whats so special about the dust? are they iron sparks of some sort? good thing the track is underground now.
@@ofcourseofcoursebutmaybe Generally the brake disks, afaik the most common method due to brake blocks damaging the wheels too much, are made of cast iron or steel (maybe ceramic depending on scenario). So the dust they spread around is metal dust and dust from the ballast, which is generally rich in quartz. Afaik that mixture of metal and quartz is an annoying type of dust to deal with.
@@ofcourseofcoursebutmaybe Don't know for sure, maybe these were sparks and embedded themselves into the metallic paint.
1) If anything similar to hook below train catches a single panel than a chain of panels will pile out below the train. In extreme case, it might derail the train. You negotiate anything except security. 2) During first winter all panels will be removed by snow plow.
3) Panels will distort rainfall-water, more at sides than in the middle. Possible result is soil sinking at sides and accelerated corrosion of steel rails. There won't be any wind or sunlight at lower side of panels, it may be permanently wet. Possible results include corrosion, growth of vegetation, expansion of ice.
Laughed my socks off when I saw this as the press reported on it!
Having to re-bed the sleepers quite frequently! All the vibration!
I have an idea! Why don't they put PV panels in old salt mines! They will be safe from hail storms and will never get covered with snow! I need to get a patent!
And no corrosion issues since the salt's already been mined!
@@alexhajnal107 :)
@@alexhajnal107 D’ohh!
If you put lights in the tunnel, they'll work even better!
Interesting, but I won't be able to help fund it. You see, I'm busy with the pioneering new technology of deep sea solar panels. This will be a real conversation starter!
It's very easy to make a solar panel mounting machine when the gravel you're laying them on is 2D. With 3D gravel it's a completely different story.
Damn 3D gravel, gets you every time. 😊
You haven't seen it coming. You will never guess it. But, surely, it will happen: Solar runways on airports.
Solar Freakin' Roadways alreayd tried to propose that! It was on their website at one point.
@@EEVblog My head hurts from THAT facepalm.
@@EEVblog wasnt that on an aircraft carrier?
I love the ending, where you put the idea into perspective. It really shows how you should do a comparison of pros and cons vs other existing solutions if you are considering something innovative. It's really a 101 on product development / innovation.
Wow that ballast cleaning machine looks really cool, I had wondered how they serviced the track beds these days.
Navies with shovels would take forever.
I'm anticipating Solar Freaking sewers any night now
Floating solar panels on the sewers are not revolutionary enough - just let them float straight up in the open seas. We can even cover whole oceans with solar panels! What can possibly go wrong? And if it does not work then i is clearly because you have not used enough solar panels.
An other issue is the high voltage used for electric trains (some systems have 25kV between overhead line and rails) along with the high transients fields when a train passes. Signal lines running along train tracks usually have multiple separate isolated metal shields to prevent induced charge damaging the signaling system. Electrically isolating solar panels in the train tracks is going to be a nightmare... along side all the other nightmarish issues this idea has.
Trains have systems that pour sand on the tracks intentionally to improve friction.
Ahh...I see others with this comment, too.
They also do it at high pressure using compressed air so good luck staying clear and shiny even with hard glass.
Why bother. Sand is SiO_2, hence a lot of Silicium to generate the panels with the aid of vibrations
..regenerate..
The part of two things solar panels hate the most reminded me of a common issue with people and saunas. Lots of people want to bring electronics into a sauna, a place that is hot and wet, when the two things electronics hate the most are heat and moisture.
ME guy here. The vibration through the tracks could be dampened through the coupling mechanisms but it would make the system cost prohibitive from the life cycle perspective. Solar barely pays for itself as it is if at all. But then you are still dealing with wake turbulence from the air flow under the train. Particles caught in the turbulence would sand blast the panels.
Next idea million dollar idea:
"Solar Bathroom tiles"
You turn the lights on to take a shower and get infinite energy.
This is brilliant, lol. And unlike with other perpetual motion machines you woudn't even have issues with friction.
😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
When you showed the site and the surrounding areas, I laughed my ass off. Like you suggested, any one of the larger surrounding buildings would surely have more real estate for panels than a stretch of tracks! This is nuttery.
Let alone not having to invent tech to put the panels down, reduce vibration on the panels and allow for them to be removed. Just get a government grant call up the local solar installers whack a series of panels on the roofs of these places and sell the power back to those in the community and walk away with a win and a stack of government money.
@r w yeah but then people would be making money and we cant have that can we, more competitors against the elite
@@rw-xf4cb not to mention that all those buildings already have a grid connection (or can just use the generated power on-site).
7:00 Air temperature and track temperature changes. Tracks bend and warp due to this. It's amazing they think this is a workable solution at all.
You could in theory put beefy springs on those locking arms to offset that. Points, bends, and various bits of equipment in the four foot are a concern, since the system they show only works for straight track. Also springs probably wouldn't help with the vibration issues that much and they'd better be well insulated or they'll short the track circuits.
Which is why the tracks are designed with spacing to count for that. Tracks in Europe tend to be from the future compared to US as trains typically travel at 200kmh easy between cities.
It’s a stupid idea anyways, but tracks bending isn’t one of reasons.
As some one who lives in Switzerland for recent several years, I can tell that you can't use random field for solar panels - they are used as farm lands most of the time. Those you've showed likely have cows and sheep most of the year, or they are now just resting for a year or so but they'll grow grain there.
But that's a small correction just about fields.
But other than that - yeah, you sure should put solar panels not on the roads (or rail roads) :)
As someone who's job is maintaining railway tracks, those panels will last about 5 mins max!
The amount of grime and that between rail tracks is crazy. Also if the panels can be layed and picked up that easily whats to stop one from coming loose due to the vibration and catching on the bottom of the rail causing a derailment.
The only thing that company got right is that there is plenty of rail infrastructure that could be used to hold solar panels. Station and other building roofs. For electrified lines you could put them on the gantrys that hold up the overhead lines.
Heck, if they end up coming loose, what's stopping someone from just stealing them?
Or even if a derailment doesn’t occur, one panel gets caught on the train and up comes kms of panels
Solar panels on gantrys is probably a bad idea, due to difficulty of installation and maintenance (proximity to high voltage lines and rails would). If you'd want to put panels on railways, the tracks often have some clear zone next to them (preventing trees from falling on the tracks), and they often have some kind of service road and grid connections at regular intervals.
But it's so much simpler and cheaper to install panels near the consumers (large roofs/parking lots of industrial/commercial buildings) or in a easy-to-install locations, such as empty fields near existing electrical infrastructure.
Just imagine how much damage the first student walking down the railway tracks from school will do to the solar panels.😲
Nobody walks down the tracks. They almost all have well maintained tarmacked paths running next to the rails designed for people to walk on.
There is also all of the lubricating grease and oil from the moving machinery dripping onto the track. Plus the signalling system if using track circuits must have the two tracks isolated so the mounting studs on these panels would need to be isolated from each other.
Another thing: the rails are used for signalling. Essentially a current is sent out through one rail and then returns through the other, and the wheels of the train are used to short across the two rails and the change in current flow lets the system know that a train is present in that section. So I wonder how the fasteners for the panels would interfere with that? Because if they made it all metal that might pose an issue
Fun fact: in some countries the train toilets work by just dumping the waste water onto the tracks. Let's not forget that the solar panels will likely interfere with train protection equipment (Eurobalise, LZB Wires, etc) and all the other stuff that you can find in the tracks (axle counters, defect detecors, track circuits used to detect the presence of a train, etc). Also this stuff would turn the lives of track maintenance crews into absolute hell for multiple reasons. Want to wash the bed? sorry, we first need to wait for the company to send one of their super fancy solar panel remover trains, wash the bed, put the solar stuff back on. I am also not quire sure how compatible it is with existing track inspection trains ("rail lab"). Also, there might be some issues when trains use their eddy current brakes or use their sand dispensers (they spray sand on the tracks to create more friction)
I am from Switzerland and I complained months ago about this. How subeinsteinian do you have to be, no wonder they crashed Credit Suisse.
Did you get any reply?
@@EEVblog cricket sounds
Do they know where the refuse goes when an Amtrak toilet gets flushed? BTW, I picked up used eight 10 Watt PV panels at a ham swap for $3 each because they were covered with so much crud it was very difficult to even know what they were. After a good long cleaning with 3M green pads I noted that they had been stamped the property of a railroad company.
Even the ground 20 feet away from a RR track vibrates when a train goes by.
There are places where you can put your hand on a wall of a building and feel the vibration whenever a train comes by from at least kilometer away. You can barely hear the trains but you can feel how everything is shaking.
Heheheh! While _most_ trains in Switzerland now have self-contained “bioreactor” toilets, there is still some old rolling stock with the “hole in the floor” style lavatories…
Amtrak toilets do not flush on to the tracks. (brown water)
although sink and shower water does. (gray water)
Not bad find for battery maintainer panels. I have good luck on marketplace for portables panels for my Bluetti for Field Day or POTA.
It is a myth that train and aircraft toilets just flush sewage out a hole in the bottom. Might have happened back in the 1800's but not on modern trains.
Dave. That's a perfect use case for, "Wireless Power" transmission!
Wireless power transmittion is generally very inefective but there is a solution! Just snap your trusty old Batteroo Batterizers on the panels to compensate for the lost enegry and you are golden!
I had someone trying to say that it was still a better idea to wirelessly charge your car because the "cables wouldn't wear out". As if there's some epidemic of cables failing. These people are delusional.
There is definitely a good place for solar panels at railroad. It is the roof over train station. Easily accessible, can store power for night lamps,... But between rails? That sounds like super stupid idea.
And I don't know much about rail, but I traveled by train a lot. Once there was some maintenance and they put there new rocks. Nice, white/black rock (I guess it was granite, but I don't know for sure). In a month or so, none of those rocks were shiny. In two or three months they had this classic look of "railroad rocks", that dark-brown, kinda like brown coal or iron ore. Like unpolished hematit. Or like everything was covered in fine iron dust... I also do not know much about solar panels, but don't you want them as clean as possible? Maybe I'm wrong, but I always thought that you need light to get in the panel to make electricity and if the front part is covered in dust, rust, oil and whatnot, it will not work, right?
We already have solar railways: It's common to see little panels near the lines to power non-critical monitoring and signalling equipment, because it's cheaper than building a power supply that can hook up to the third rail voltages or running cables from the nearest substation.
Not to mention derailment. Derailment can cause serious incidents like a train wreck. Those are rare. But minor derailment are fairly common. The wheel of a wagon goes off the track and goes on for kilometers before the problem is noticed and corrected. If you had solar panel between the tracks, you now have shatter glass and potentially hazardous beams of metals which could increase the risk of a train wreck.
Just had a derailment near where I live, a very empty rural area in a northern state. Heard it was a problem with hard ice built up on the rail. Locomotive had its front wheels about a foot or two off to the right, off the rails. Guess where the front left wheels landed? Of course solar PV isn't a good idea in cold high latitude places anyway.
I like how the sleepers are just floating on the rock texture. Yes, this is absolutely going to be viable.
... and in the video they're wood... I think the last wooden sleepers were replaced about 30 years ago here in Norway.
@@koma-k In the US, we still use wooden "sleepers" (we call them "ties"), but most major rail lines are starting to be replaced with concrete, especially passenger railways.
@@koma-k That isn't all that rare in many parts of the world. New wooden ties get deployed all the time in North America.
Oh for crying out loud. Dust, dirt, vibration - you hit the nail right on the head, unless we're talking defunct railways. But then it's still waaaaaaaay better to have a solar farm with panels all close to each other and the inverters, avoiding voltage drops in cables that would run too long. But hey, that's how the world is gonna look like if the visionaries or entrepreneurs aren't engineers or don't ask them first... Like we say here in Poland, it's dumber than a shoe on your left foot.
On the other hand, I like this way of laying the panels. This is genuinely interesting.
As for that power coupling, maybe it's the wireless energy transfer rubbish again? Hitting two birds with one stone.
Interesting under-track maintenance footage too!
So that's where the left shoe surplus is coming from
Defunct rail lines can be and are easily repurposed into unpaved cycle tracks. Solar freakin dirt tracks!
Great shout out. Ignoring all the other craziness about this idea, those panel fixing rods look awfully like the train inner wheel flanges would contact them. From a quick search, the wheel flanges often go down to about 50% of the rail middle section. Can't see railway standards people approving that. Imagine the carnage if a wheel hit a fixing rod that then started flipping panels as a train went over.
5:09 "1) Reflection and planning" goes so well you dont even need a step 2
Looks like it will be very easy to steal the panels.
Shhh...
I live next to train tracks and need some panels.
I'm glad I'm not the only one thinking that. 😆
We’re talking about the Swiss here. Their response will be “…but stealing is illegal!”
I guess we're all going to be salvaging parts then :P
I was about to post that. Ty for beating me to it. In the Netherlands there are problems with thieves stealing copper from the overhead electricity lines without getting electrocuted. They sell it as copper for a fraction of the price it takes them to replace. So I wonder if these panels will break before they are stolen. It's going to be a close call.
Do you know how much pressure a train puts on the tracks? The contact area of a railway carriage on the track is about half the size of the palm of your hand, and there’s 30-120 tonnes on that area (+ dynamic forces). It’s enough to crush leaves into lubricating graphite, and the track bends under that weight.
Rail also involves lots of grease and oil that finds its way to everything in the vicinity.
BTW, are ALL marketing people sleazebags? There seems to be a trend...
I wish I could share some images from my train station, the rails and space between them are absolutely covered by metallic dust from the wheels and breaks, and usually, the dust creates some kind of stalagmite shape around the track except the very top of the rail which is in contact with wheels! perfect to short electronics and perfect to reduce the efficiency to nothing!
2:00 The trains in Canada also drains the toilet directly on the track and those rocks are full of sticky toxic oils and broken parts of very though metals train parts that failed after too much... vibrations!
To solve the wiring problem, maybe they’re going to use Wigl technology to transmit the power wirelessly to a receiver just outside the tracks.
I was thinking the same thing. Aren’t we luckily to have both those technologies together! 😊😊
This made me literally laugh out loud.
There is a rail line nearby where I ride every month, here in the UK in a rural area, and even a dinky little solar panel they put on top of one of the signalling pylons looked like it had been sand-blasted to oblivion after only 4 months of existing, and this was with a (feeble, but still present) attempt at protecting the panel as weill with some kind of perspex offset "guard" that just got shattered to pieces
How they expect panels to survive between the rails directly beign impacted with all that debris, never mind the shock loading of a 440 metric ton train hurtling along at 100+ mph, is beyond me, smarter ideas include fields bought for the railway to pass through being used for solar farms (like I have seen a couple of times here), putting solar panels on any existing infrastructure or putting gantries overhead to put solar panels in a proper place at least, not this idiocy
Even if trhey had a wacky idea like putting solar panels on moving trains and then sending that energy back to the grid would be a "smarter" idea if they wanted to be "innovative", and something like that has a laundry list of issues I can think of already, never mind rehashing an already failed grift of solar roadways and going "I know, lets make it even more impossible"
They don't expect the panels to survive. They expect to be given lots of money to fail to develop a working system and then go bankrupt. They then expect to emerge with a new corporate identity and do it all again with a new idea.
Dave, look up thermite rail welding, I just saw one yesterday and they leave weld/slag on the inner vertical part of the track, so I guess they can’t lay it either. Haha.
Ah yes, I saw a video on YT about that. Fun stuff, great for ruining nearby solar panels!
I don't understand why these companies haven't targeted highway median strips. It's a large area where solar panels could be installed sensibly (i.e. elevated and tilted toward the sun) , but barely used. (I think there's a good system in South Korea, but could be mistaken.)
Actually solar panels on the outside edge of railway right of way isn’t horrible. Especially when used to run signals, crossing gates, and increased sensor deployment is a good idea.
Now the key is elevation, because train maintenance would cause havoc. Rail grinders shower sparks to either side, ballast rock routinely gets flung to the side by trains, you get bits of dropped coal and junk from the trains, lots of rust and brake dust, etc. The worst thing to deal with is any area that gets snow. When a train hits or clears snow almost anything within 2 meters of the tracks gets a massive amount of force from the snow impact.
I'm sure these panels will hold up great when a flanger comes along to remove snow between the rails. Lol
you would probably have to remove them in the fall till spring. And Switzerland is not a good place for winters.
Oh no, the will be burnt away by the energy from the panels.
I noticed quite a lot of space beside the railways , i claim my 5 quid for my fantastic expansion idea that no one else has thought of .
I'm glad I live in Canuckistan where most of the rail traffic is freight and this story of thing is unlikely (but don't tell our leaders). As usual, laying the panels flat reduces the efficiency to 30%. Snow would cover the panels for months at a time. Vibration and dust. I look forward to a followup report on the success or lack thereof.
With the proper amount of lying these people could write a report to convince those spending your money to invest in this boondoggle.
Have you seen the amount of stones and oil that gathers on the sleepers ? LOL.
I can see these shattering as soon as the first train rolls over them. :)
Railways are actually fantastic pieces of infrastructure. They go everywhere and are paid for and mostly in public hand.
And the railways usually own a good chunks left and right of the track.
So by all means, while you put in electrification install a solar power shade structure over the electrical lines. It would also help to keep the snow and leaves off the tracks.
It's no surprise railways tend to be the biggest operator of glasfibres. Because they own those neat infrastructure corridors..
I followed back when the first solar roadway video came out. I can't believe almost 9 years later they are still doing it. I feel like I already know how this is going to end. xD
The idea of using the fixturing system of my doorframe pull-up bar to mount solar panels is inventive, I grant them that. But it also relies exactly on the deflection mode of the rails that is most intensive during traffic.
That was the first thing I pictured, the first time a train passes and put pressure on the tracks, they will try to spread and the "things" will all fall down. There's a reason tracks have sleepers between them.
You know, I always thought that solar panels would be suited for bring put beside the rails, not in between them, especially because of all of the land that has to be cleared around them anyway.
And the Korean solution over the allows the flat panels to be aimed in the right direction and tilted a bit for better angle of incidence to the sun... It's not tracking, but it beats flat on the ground. As the path meandered around, the panels appeared to have the same orientation the whole way through.
1:58 solar panels also don't like being hit with large rocks, which also fly around when a train goes past.
So many ways this is wrong but here''s one I don't think has been mentioned. Ever seen those track maintenance trains going past where the rails are being ground and reprofiled? Imagine all the iron dust and hot sparks being hurled at the panels and associated cabling when that goes on.
... and yes, toilets from passenger trains. Here in Queensland, Australia the close of the 1960s also saw the end of regular schedule steam locomotives. Even so the Sunlander (1950s era passenger train) continued to run until 2014 so it was still possible to encounter a giant steamer on the tracks ...
Some years ago we had the railroad nearby run a Track Grinder along the base of a bluff in the middle of summer, starting a string of fires that raced up the bluff toward houses. Of course the RR denied all responsibility and got sued by the city, probably settled after the coverage died down. Track grinders emit HUGE clouds of iron dust and sparks, I've seen one working at night.
Toilets don’t discharge onto the tracks in Europe. Haven’t for decades.
Id love to see them try this on an American coal railway. It would last a week at best not to mention the panels would get stolen lol
In Wisconsin there’s marble-sized taconite all over the tracks that “leaks” from hopper cars.
Lol in the US you could set a stopwatch for how long the panels would last. 😂 Put fragile glass panels on tracks where thousand ton trains are running??
Haha, in south africa it would probably get stolen within the hour.
We have the largest coal port in the world in Newcastle, Australia, houses near the lines are covered in coal dust, these panels would be covered in no time. The massive trains shake the ground too, this is a crazy idea.
That's the first thing that came to my mind. I'd just wait for nightfall and then steal as many as possible before they got destroyed by normal railway use. I'd treat them much, much better.
As soon as I saw this, I was excited but just to watch you rip it to shreds
Oh I bet all those railway workers will just love having to deal with these when fixing the track.
Also imagine the damage a derailment can cause. 99% of derailments are just a single axle that comes off and gets dragged for many km. That would destroy millions of dollars of panels.
Just thinking of 15kV and grounding issues should make one run away from this.
They've been awarded a contract so it has worked exactly as they intended .
In France (and maybe in other countries in the world as well), there is a mean to send some signaling informations from track to train in the shape of big metal bars in the middle of the track, and the electric signal is picked up by a metal brush under the train. It's very stiff wires poking under the train right in the middle....
The block signaling train detection also work when an axle shorts both rails. I hope their studs are insulated or it would wreak havoc in signaling....
There's also... things that get dropped from passenger trains right in the middle of the track. Yup, toilet things XD
I'm very surprised such a joke comes from Switzerland, they are very serious about railroading. Just look at this tiny little single tracked line, but it is electrified. And also they are not newcomers in renewable energy neither (mountains means lots of dams and hydro power).
My first thought when seeing those locking arms was "those had better be bloody well insulated or it'll short the track circuits and bring the line to a standstill because the automated system thinks there's a train just sitting in that block".
In a railroad we have vibration, impacts, dust, metallic fragments, oil, grease, and a sample of each and every product transported. This is when the composition is not stopped on the rails. It will certainly work! LOL
I don't know in what country you live, but that is not the case for the tracks in Switzerland. The Infrastructure is first class.
i like how someone points out a genuine critique and they respond with a "we have a thingamabob that would prevent that from happening". no addressing the fundamental design flaw, just a technology bandaid