A British company, Bankset Energy, is installing solar panels along the German railways, Deutsche Bahn or German Rail. The idea of the solar roadway is innovative because an all-electric future will arrive.
A recent photo from Steve Przybilla shows this being tested at a train station in Saxony. According to oft-repeated news sources, “100 kilowatts of electricity can be generated per kilometre of the railway line. Since the Deutsche Bahn rail network is over 60,000 kilometres long, the power that can be generated is comparable to the output of five nuclear power plants.” Bankset assessed in their post on Railway Technology that a direct connection between the overhead wires and their system would supply trains with traction power.
Solar PV arrays a typical output DC power at 600–800V, while electric rail runs at 750V which means transmissions have less of a cost gap than electrical grids and the need for public subsidies may be eliminated.
Isoti, the Head Engineer at the European Rail Infrastructure Group, said that “they currently provide power to overhead lines in all current options: AC and DC, low, medium and high voltage, HVDC. The main purpose of this is to provide power to stations and power directly to the consumer or buildings alongside long-distance rail lines.
Patrick Buri, the founder of Bankset, wrote in a LinkedIn article published in 2021: “Hello everyone, Bankset is the inventor and company behind solar for the railway! For years we test and build solar for the rails infrastructure and we have systems for 16,7 Hz feeds and or 50 Hz feeds live ongoing in Germany, Austria, Switzerland., the UK, Japan, Italy China, and Australia. It has been tested for years and proven product-up and running great.”
This is a great accomplishment for the Transportation and Railway corporations as this serves to diminish costs for both the governments and the entire public.