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manarth
Pilot to place solar panels in the space between train tracks shown to be a success.
dbrgn
A lot of people doubted this could work. After all, railway tracks are a dusty, hot environment with tons of vibrations that could cause microcracks.

I was in the doubter team too, but if this really worked out, that's great news. Congrats to the project team! Will be interesting to see if this scales well.

pseudohadamard
And if you simply install them in the empty space next to the tracks, where there's no vibration or other problems and you can angle them optimally for solar capture, you get the same benefits without having to custom manufacture panels that are extra-tough to deal with the fact that you've installed them in one of the worst possible places to put panels. They never mention what those armour-plated panels cost, what effect they have on track maintenance, and what their efficiency is due to suboptimal placing compared to next to the track at the right angle. Heck, put in bifacials and you can swap out existing noise barriers for power-generating ones.

It's a case of "given enough thrust, pigs can indeed fly" rather than an actually useful idea.

casey2
Could they at least get a well-lit picture of panels that aren't covered in dirt and rocks? This is a lying eyes situation now. Depressing.
JR1427
What are the advantages to putting them between the rails, where you need trains to stop running in order to access them?

If it's about using wasted land, why not put them beside the rails, which would make access easier? There is usually a generous margin beside the tracks.

This would also allow bigger panels to be used.

cjbenedikt
I often wonder about some of the more critical comments on projects like this. It should be welcomed by everybody that someone even tries. If it doesn't work - well at least we know. If it does - even better. Anyone who has ever started a hardware company like this group would know who challenging this can be no matter what. But to do that in such a highly regulated environment? Methinks it is very impressive that they got that far and hopefully will go further!