Innovative Use of Railway Real Estate to Generate Solar Power

Solar Power from Railway Tracks

Solar panels are being innovatively used in a number of places to save on the real estate cost of putting millions of solar panels in utility-scale plants in open areas. Floating solar power plants have already become a major industry with solar panels being used on reservoirs, canals etc. There are already massive solar plants running on water bodies. Solar panels have also been innovatively used on roads by integrating them into the road surface itself. Now a new way has been found to install solar panels on railway tracks.

A company called Bankset Energy is marketing an innovative energy system by which they install highly force resistant solar panels on railway tracks. Since most of the time these tracks are not used, the solar panels can continue to generate solar energy at almost the same rate as normal solar panels planted on field or grounds. The company is already installing 200 MW of solar panels on 1000 km of track in Germany and wants to rapidly proliferate this technology across the world.

One good thing about railway tracks is that they generally have power lines running in parallel which means easy evacuation of power. Another big advantage is that there is no real estate cost associated with these systems. The power can be sold to railway companies.

The solar panels are designed so that they easily fit the existing railway tracks without much effort required in the way of customizing the panels. This reduces the installation cost. The electricity generated from the panels can also be used in multiple ways such as selling to the railway stations, the trains as well as nearby power users like homes and finally evacuated to the power company if it is willing to buy the power.