A very clever but very simple idea has emerged from Switzerland – removable solar panels installed between the tracks of a railway line.
The system was piloted last year. In April 2025, Swiss company, Sun-Ways, installed solar panels on a 100-metre stretch of railway in Buttes, in canton Neuchâtel. The panels sit between the rails, on the sleepers. This is a very simple approach and means that they can be easily removed for railway maintenance.
Just over a year later, Joseph Scuderi, Sun-Ways’ founder, told Swissinfo, “We have achieved our objectives, both in terms of railway safety and electricity production.” More than 11,000 trains have run over the solar panels, and the installation has proven to be “perfectly stable and safe during their passage,” he said.
SwissInfo reported that Switzerland’s roughly 5,320 kilometres of railway network – excluding tunnels or poorly sunlit sections – could generate up to one billion kWh of solar energy per year, equivalent to the consumption of 300,000 households or about 2% of the electricity used in the country.
Read the full article at SwissInfo here. See how the system works at Sun-Ways website here.