Sun-Ways Pilots PV Panels Between Train Tracks in Switzerland
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- Sun-Ways piloted patented interlocking PV panels mounted directly onto existing standard rails, designed to send power to the grid, stations, terminals, or the train itself without disrupting conventional railway traffic.
- Founder Joseph Scuderi told Swissinfo that more than 11,000 trains have circulated over the installation, and that the system met both its railway-safety and electricity-production objectives during the pilot.
- Rail servicing firm Scheuchzer AG built a purpose-built installation machine that can lay up to 300 meters (~985 feet) of panels per hour, more than 500 panels per day, yielding roughly 190 kW of installed capacity per day at ~380 W per ~2 m panel.
- The deployment requires no new land purchases, real estate development, or rooftop engineering and reinforcement — the panels slot into infrastructure space already in active use.
- Sun-Ways frames the concept as a complement to other dual-use solar siting that avoids replacing farmland, clearing forests, or covering rooftops to keep growing clean-electricity capacity.
- Scaling the math: with roughly 140,000 miles of active U.S. freight track, the article suggests even 20% suitability would translate to more than 8 GW of installed PV capacity (the author flags the figure for verification).
Why it matters: Rail corridors represent a large, already-disturbed land bank that has been effectively off-limits to solar developers. If Sun-Ways and Scheuchzer AG's plug-in panel system proves durable and affordable at scale, rail rights-of-way could contribute gigawatts of new capacity in the U.S. and Europe without taking a single acre of farmland or forest — directly addressing siting, one of solar's most persistent bottlenecks.
