Home – Energy – Switzerland switched on the world’s first removable solar plant laid between railway tracks, and Italy and France are already watching closely
Switzerland is testing a deceptively simple idea that could change how countries think about clean energy. Instead of looking for new land to build solar farms, a Swiss startup has placed removable solar panels in the narrow space between active railway tracks, and the first results are positive.
The pilot project in Buttes, in the canton of Neuchâtel, has now handled more than 11,000 passing trains without disrupting daily rail operations, according to Sun-Ways founder Joseph Scuderi. The small solar plant has also produced more than 16,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity since May 20, 2025, enough to roughly cover the annual use of three to four households.
Sun-Ways installed the system in April 2025 on a roughly 328-foot stretch of railway in western Switzerland. The photovoltaic panels sit between the rails and rest on the sleepers, turning a piece of infrastructure most people never notice into a small power station.
Could this really work under moving trains? That was the big question. Scuderi told Swissinfo that the company had met its objectives on both railway safety and electricity production, adding that the installation had remained “perfectly stable and safe” as trains passed over it.
The clever part is not only where Sun-Ways placed the panels. It is that workers can remove them when they need access to the track, a detail that matters in the real world of repairs, inspections, welding, and sleeper replacement.
According to Scuderi, workers can detach a roughly 20-foot module made of three solar panels from the track and disconnect it from the grid in about 10 minutes using dedicated tools. This means the solar system is meant to work around rail maintenance, not get in the way of it.
That may sound like a small operational point, but for rail companies it is central. Nobody wants a green energy project that slows trains, blocks crews, or creates another headache on already busy lines.
Solar panels lose efficiency when dirt, snow, or dust builds up on their surface. At first, Sun-Ways planned to clean the panels with a cylindrical brush mounted on the back of a train.
Then something interesting happened. Scuderi said the company realized that the airflow passing trains created swept dust away from the panels. On the Buttes section, trains reach up to about 56 mph, which appears to be enough to help keep the surface cleaner than expected.
That does not mean cleaning will never be needed, especially in harsher climates or on busier industrial corridors, but it does suggest the railway itself may do part of the maintenance work, almost by accident.
TransN, the public transport company that operates the Buttes rail section, told Swissinfo that the system has not interfered with infrastructure, maintenance, or train traffic. The company also said it had received no glare reports from locomotive drivers, one of the concerns often raised about putting reflective equipment near railway operations.
Swiss Federal Railways is watching the project but is not a partner. For now, it is focusing its own solar plans on stations, noise barriers, maintenance centers, and other surfaces it already owns, rather than installing panels between the rails.
That cautious stance is worth noting. The Buttes project is promising; however, it is still a pilot, and railway systems tend to move carefully for good reason.
The installation in Buttes is modest. Sun-Ways says the live pilot includes 48 solar panels rated at 380 watts each, with an installed power of 18 kWp and estimated annual production of 16,000 kilowatt-hours.
The larger estimate is what makes the idea interesting. Sun-Ways says Switzerland’s rail network, after excluding tunnels and shaded sections, could generate up to 1 billion kilowatt-hours of solar energy per year if equipped with this type of system. That would equal the consumption of about 300,000 households, or roughly 2% of Switzerland’s electricity use.
At the end of the day, what the company is trying to do is turn unused rail space into distributed energy infrastructure. No farmland. No extra rooftops. Just the strip of track that is already there.
The Swiss trial has already drawn attention abroad. In February 2026, France’s SNCF Group announced that it was joining forces with Sun-Ways to explore movable solar power equipment installed between rails on working passenger lines.
SNCF said its Technology, Innovation and Group Projects Division and SNCF Réseau teams are studying how the equipment affects maintenance operations. The French group also said the Buttes pilot will run through April 2028 and will generate data on installation, glare, track inspection, dirt buildup, power output, and maintenance impacts.
That interest matters because SNCF is France’s largest electricity consumer and one of the country’s biggest landowners. If the technology proves safe and useful, France has far more track space to study than Switzerland.
Sun-Ways is also looking beyond France. Scuderi told Swissinfo that the company is in contact with Rete Ferroviaria Italiana, Italy’s rail infrastructure manager, over a possible pilot project. Other discussions involve companies in South Korea and Indonesia.
Still, there is a technical catch. Julien Pouget, an associate professor at the University of Applied Sciences of Valais, has warned that storing and moving electricity over long distances remains difficult for this kind of linear solar infrastructure. Existing technology is not well suited for stretches longer than about 1,640 feet without a specific electrical architecture.
That is where the next chapter begins. Producing power between the rails is one thing. Moving it efficiently, safely, and cheaply across long corridors is the harder engineering test.
For now, the Swiss experiment offers a practical lesson. Clean energy does not always require a dramatic new landscape. Sometimes it starts with using overlooked space better.
The Buttes project is still small, and final approval has not yet arrived, but after thousands of trains, no reported operational conflicts, and measurable power production, the idea has moved from eye-catching concept to serious infrastructure test.
The official statement was published on SNCF Group.
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