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.
I wonder if the benefits are legal/jurisdiction/political. The total amount of track they could install this on is huge, and it doesn't seem like something that will be disagreeable on the local level. It could just be the easiest place to put it to deal with property law and zoning etc.
Another political benefit is that it means work for a very large number of jurisdictions, as there are suitable tracks just about everywhere.
This is far from an of course. There were idiots trying to do solar roads a few years ago. The math didn't pencil out.
2. Yeah it was kind of dumb to put the panels into a high wear environment like a road.
3. What matters more is which projects pencil out the best. There are too many to choose from that have a positive ROI.
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...