How do solar railways work? Startup gets green light for pilot project in Switzerland

Solar panels are set to be rolled out “like carpet” on railway tracks in Switzerland in a world-first.

Swiss start-up Sun-Ways has been given the green light for a three-year pilot project in the western canton of Neuchâtel, with work to begin in spring 2025.

As the climate crisis demands that we speed up Europe’s energy transition, developers have been seeing new potential in unusual surfaces.

Roadsides, reservoirs and farms are all finding space for solar systems, and other companies are experimenting with adding PV elements to railway sleepers too.

But Sun-Ways is the first to patent a removable system, with the help of EPFL, the Swiss federal technology institute in Lausanne.

“This will be the first time that solar panels will be installed on a railway track with trains that pass over them,” Sun-Ways CEO Joseph Scuderi told SWI swissinfo.ch.

The removable innovation is a crucial one since railway tracks need to be cleared from time to time for essential maintenance work.

The Swiss company will use a mechanical system to install its removable solar panels.

A train developed by Swiss track maintenance company Scheuchzer will travel along the rails, laying photovoltaic panels as it goes. It’s just “like an unrolling carpet", says Sun-Ways.

The specially designed train uses a piston mechanism to unfurl the one-metre-wide panels, pre-assembled at a Swiss factory. It claims to be able to install up to 1,000 m2 of solar panels per day.

It’s been a bumpy road to getting sign-off from authorities. The Federal Office of Transport rejected the request last year as a precautionary measure, but after ten months of building and testing prototypes, Sun-Ways has secured a permit to begin applying the tech to an open line in Neuchâtel.

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