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Solar rail could become common in Europe after successful trial in Switzerland

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Re: Solar rail could become common in Europe after successful trial in Switzerland

#111

Post by tmtvl »

xnx wrote: post #101
ryanmcbride wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. For example, I think the lifted solar panels that have been popping up over parking lots are a perfect win-win. Cars get shade, power gets generated, it's out of the way of most day-to-day threats, and if they have to do repairs, it's just blocking off part of a parking lot instead of a major thoroughfare. If there's a single downside I'm not sure what it is.

Would be interesting if solar panel rows laid right on the ground could make sense for autonomous vehicle parking lots where cars can drive over the panels precisely enough to not crush them.

Not really. Solar panels laid flat on the ground are less efficient than solar panels raised above ground and angled to get more yield (if you're in the Northern hemisphere the Sun is never* in the North, vice versa for the South).

* Midnight sun notwithstanding.

Re: Solar rail could become common in Europe after successful trial in Switzerland

#112

Post by dukeyukey »

ryanmcbride wrote: post #99
dukeyukey wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is not the answer (plenty of profit in solar), it's probably that society is literally older and so people don't like change as much.

I know there's profit in solar, but the game is rigged to favor oil and gas so that's still more profitable for the people who make the decisions.

This is bizarre to me, because the energy markets in my country (the UK) are bent to benefit solar and wind over all else. We banned oil and gas exploration, and even regulated out coal from the entire market. It's extremely hard to see how this benefits fossil fuel companies.

Re: Solar rail could become common in Europe after successful trial in Switzerland

#113

Post by xnx »

tmtvl wrote: post #111
xnx wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would be interesting if solar panel rows laid right on the ground could make sense for autonomous vehicle parking lots where cars can drive over the panels precisely enough to not crush them.

Not really. Solar panels laid flat on the ground are less efficient than solar panels raised above ground and angled to get more yield (if you're in the Northern hemisphere the Sun is never* in the North, vice versa for the South). * Midnight sun notwithstanding.

Definitely, the tradeoff is that it is cheap/easy to install things on the ground. https://erthos.com/ is testing that.

Re: Solar rail could become common in Europe after successful trial in Switzerland

#114

Post by panick21_ »

Since the 90s our energy policy has been idiotic. Basically just politicians saying 'lets do nothing we can always buy cheap power form Germany or France'. All we had to do is build a single new nuclear power plant and we would have been fine.

But no, instead we have this grifting rail solar nonsense.

Re: Solar rail could become common in Europe after successful trial in Switzerland

#115

Post by panick21_ »

Epa095 wrote: post #33
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> at least the train isn’t driving directly on the thing It’s just kicking up dust and dripping lubricant onto it. Maybe this makes sense. I’m deeply sceptical. Especially when you could just be putting vertical panels to the sides.

Initially, he planned to remove dust from the surface of the photovoltaic cells using a cylindrical brush mounted on the rear of a train. “However, we realised that each time a train passes, it creates an airflow that sweeps away all the dust,” he said. https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/emissions-reduction/solar-energ...

Until you realize that polan is super stick and is really had to remove. I had a table outside and just 'blow away' dust didn't work at all. You need to actually clean with friction, water and cleaner.

Re: Solar rail could become common in Europe after successful trial in Switzerland

#116

Post by matthewdgreen »

lefra wrote: post #68
Aurornis wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or don’t put the panels near a railway at all. We have so much land and even empty rooftops that would be easier and safer to use first. Running panels along a railway means the electricity has to be carried all the way back to some point, meaning either giant cables to handle the current or specialized equipment and high voltage transmission lines. None of that was addressed by this pilot program that was 100 meters…

Conveniently, there's already an electric cable sized to transport a few MW nearby. This might reduce the cost of installation, also there'll be no land acquisition/impact study issues. However, I agree that putting solar panels in between or near rails will increase the cost of maintenance: the technicians will need to travel longer times to the work site, and now they also need to be certified to work near railroad…

What specs do you require for long-distance train electrification vs. the specs you need for electrical delivery to the grid?

Re: Solar rail could become common in Europe after successful trial in Switzerland

#117

Post by ipdashc »

ryanmcbride wrote: post #80
dukeyukey wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People hate the idea of solar in currently-unused space. Even if that space is bare desert. So you can get a big PR boost if you propose "solar, but on a thing" (roadways, water, and now trains).

Which is just odd to me because why are we holding one of the cleanest means of generating electricity to a higher standard than like, coal and oil? Why does solar have to have 0 footprint when everything else gets as much of a footprint as it wants? (I know the answer is profit)

I'm a big fan of solar but this seems like a stretch. Generating the same amount of power as one fossil fuel plant requires a vast amount of land area, so of course that's why people complain about it. Coal plants and mines can be pretty large but natural gas plants, the realistic alternative, are pretty compact. I'm not sure how the size of oil/gas fields compares to a similar amount of solar, but they are generally sited far away, where people don't see them - and can be built relatively visually unobtrusively (see LA). And then there's nuclear plants, pretty big, but putting out multiple gigawatts.

Again, I think fossil fuels need to go and solar is our best bet, but no sense in hand waving the entire argument. They need a lot of land area.

Re: Solar rail could become common in Europe after successful trial in Switzerland

#118

Post by MisterTea »

This is another bad idea in the same vein of solar roadways. To the layman, these ideas sound fantastic. To the knowledgeable they sound downright absurd. Put them on roofs, over car parks, over land. No way should they be on difficult to access locations with vehicle traffic.

Re: Solar rail could become common in Europe after successful trial in Switzerland

#119

Post by acdha »

parineum wrote: post #100
ryanmcbride wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. For example, I think the lifted solar panels that have been popping up over parking lots are a perfect win-win. Cars get shade, power gets generated, it's out of the way of most day-to-day threats, and if they have to do repairs, it's just blocking off part of a parking lot instead of a major thoroughfare. If there's a single downside I'm not sure what it is.

The closest thing to a downside I can come up with is that, at least in CA, there's more than enough solar already. Adding solar to the grid without batteries included isn't really productive.

I think that’ll rebalance over time but one of the biggest questions I’d have is how to use all of the batteries people are driving around. A buddy shifted his car charging to work because they have a convenient setup with a bunch of solar panels and that seems like a good path to encourage going forward: let sunny day over production shift vehicle charging off of times where load would need to come from grid batteries, fossil, or wind.
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