Science and Technology
Solar panels often compete with agriculture and natural ecosystems for the same scarce resource: land. The Swiss startup Sun-Ways found a solution by looking down at a train station: installing solar panels between railway tracks, taking advantage of an existing, already urbanized surface that serves no other purpose than supporting the sleepers. The first pilot project was inaugurated on April 24, 2025, in Buttes, a small village in western Switzerland, with 100 meters of solar panels installed on sleepers of an active railway line where trains normally circulate.
What differentiates Sun-Ways from similar projects in Germany, Italy, France, and Japan is that its system is removable. The solar panels can be mechanically installed and removed by a machine developed by the Swiss railway maintenance company Scheuchzer, which can place or remove nearly 1,000 square meters of modules in just a few hours. This rapid removal capability is essential to allow maintenance work on the tracks without compromising railway operations or damaging the solar equipment.
The installation in Buttes consists of 48 solar panels positioned on the railway sleepers, the rectangular wooden pieces that support the steel tracks. The modules can be placed manually or by Scheuchzer’s automated machine, which unrolls the panels as if they were a carpet laid out between the tracks.
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The process was designed to be fast enough to be carried out during scheduled maintenance intervals, without requiring long interruptions to railway traffic.
Although the solar panels are designed to remain in place while trains run over them, the ability to easily remove them is what makes their use on active railways viable. Tracks require regular maintenance, including sleeper replacement, gauge adjustment, and weld inspection. If the panels were fixed, each intervention would require complex and costly disassembly. With the removable system, the maintenance team removes the modules, performs the work on the tracks, and reinstalls the panels in a matter of hours. To keep the modules clean, a cylindrical brush can be attached to the end of operating trains.
The history of railway solar panels began in 2020, when Joseph Scuderi was waiting for a train at Renens station, west of Lausanne. Looking at the empty space between the tracks, he wondered why no one was doing anything with that idle surface. Five years later, the question transformed into a startup, an inaugurated pilot project, and formal interest from at least six countries in adopting the technology.
South Korea is one of the most advanced partners. Taebon Park, CEO of Korean Rail Solar Power Generation Project Company, personally participated in the inauguration in Buttes and intends to adapt the Sun-Ways system to South Korea’s approximately 6,600 km railway network. A pilot project is expected to start in the country later this year. Indonesia has also shown interest, with plans to start in the city of Bogor, West Java, and expand to the entire island. Japan, through its Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport, is following the project as part of its decarbonization goals by 2050.
The 100-meter pilot project in Buttes will produce up to 16,000 kWh of electricity per year, equivalent to the consumption of four to six households. Sun-Ways estimates that if solar panels were installed along Switzerland’s approximately 5,320 kilometers of railway network, excluding sections in tunnels or with low solar incidence, generation would reach 1 billion kWh per year. This volume corresponds to the consumption of 300,000 households, or about 2% of all electricity used in Switzerland.
For a country that needs to multiply its solar energy production sevenfold by 2035, every available surface counts. Switzerland, like most European countries, faces the dilemma of expanding renewable generation without consuming agricultural land or natural areas. The tracks offer a solution that does not compete with any other land use: the railway is already built, the surface between the tracks is not suitable for planting or housing, and the electrical infrastructure needed to inject energy into the grid often already exists near the railway lines.
Not everyone is convinced that installing solar panels between tracks is the best idea. Martin Heinrich, a researcher at the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems, Europe’s largest solar research institute, acknowledges that using tracks to generate energy is a great idea, but questions whether the removability of the modules is truly an advantage. According to Heinrich, photovoltaic modules should ideally be installed once and remain in place for the next 20 to 30 years. Each removal increases costs and raises the risk of equipment damage.
The Swiss transport authority also adopted a cautious stance. It authorized the test in Buttes because trains in the region operate at a maximum speed of 70 km/h, relatively low by railway standards. The testing phase was stipulated for at least three years, not six months as Sun-Ways had planned, so that the behavior of the tracks, the wear of the panels, and maintenance challenges can be evaluated in all seasons and under real, prolonged operating conditions.
Sun-Ways is not the only company exploring the idea of placing solar panels on railways, but it is the first to develop a removable system for operational lines. Projects in Germany, Italy, France, and Japan also test photovoltaic modules between tracks, but with fixed systems that require traffic interruption for maintenance. The difference with the Swiss model lies in the operational flexibility that quick removal provides, allowing the railway to continue functioning without restrictions while the panels generate energy.
Sun-Ways believes that solar panels could be installed on half of the world’s railway lines, an ambitious estimate that considers the exclusion of sections in tunnels, covered viaducts, and regions with low solar irradiation. In addition to South Korea, Indonesia, and Japan, the startup collaborates on projects in Spain and Romania and maintains exploratory talks with potential partners in China and the United States. The budget for the initial testing phase in Buttes was 585,000 Swiss francs, equivalent to approximately US$704,000.
The Buttes pilot project marks the beginning of a testing period that will define whether Joseph Scuderi’s idea at a train station can become a global standard. The solar panels between the tracks are already generating energy, trains continue to pass over them normally, and the Scheuchzer machine has already demonstrated that installing and removing almost 1,000 square meters of modules is a matter of hours. What remains to be proven is whether the system can withstand years of continuous operation, extreme climatic variations, and wear caused by daily railway traffic.
Do you think installing solar panels between train tracks is a viable solution for Brazil, which has thousands of kilometers of railways? Tell us in the comments what you think about the Sun-Ways idea, whether the quick removal of modules is a real advantage or a complication, and which country should adopt this technology first. We want to hear your opinion on solar energy in unexpected places.
I cover construction, mining, Brazilian mines, oil, and major railway and civil engineering projects. I also write daily about interesting facts and insights from the Brazilian market.
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