Solar panels between Swiss rails survive 11,000 trains in their first year

The practical problem in Buttes was access. Track needs regular maintenance, and anything fixed between the rails gets in the crews' way. Sun-Ways' patented panels fill that gap and lift out when work is due ^[10]. Over the first year roughly 30 trains a day ran across them ^[19]. "We have achieved our objectives, both in terms of railway safety and electricity production," Joseph Scuderi, the company's founder, told Swissinfo ^[2].

On average each panel produced about 333 kWh ^[20]. The stretch reached its total despite a month-long stop for snow and planned technical work ^[11]. Across all 330 feet, the output equals the annual use of three to four Swiss households ^[12].

Those figures are enough to check the company's national projection. Scaled to every one of the network's 3,300 miles, the 330-foot pilot stretch repeats 52,800 times ^[16]. At the Buttes yield, that comes to roughly 845 million kWh a year ^[18], or power for 158,000 to 211,000 households ^[17]. The 300,000-household figure Sun-Ways gives ^[22] sits above that range before a single tunnel or poorly lit stretch is taken out. Reaching it requires more usable track per mile of network than the pilot implies, or more output per foot.

The speed result has a ceiling too. Scuderi has told PV Magazine of interest from Japan and South Korea, where trains run at more than 186 mph ^[3]. That is about 3.4 times the fastest train in the Buttes test ^[21]. The evidence so far comes from one 330-foot stretch, one year into a pilot ^[8][9]. The report does not include an installation price or a cost per kilowatt-hour. Without one, goodgoodgood.co's point that rail solar needs no land purchase ^[14] cannot be weighed against what a conventional solar site costs.

In my view the Buttes data support a narrow conclusion. On a regional line at up to 55 mph, removable panels between the rails survived a year of traffic and kept generating, according to the account published by goodgoodgood.co ^[1]. That makes rail track a credible site for engineering trials. The case for national-scale generation rests on Sun-Ways' own projection, and the pilot's yield, scaled up, falls short of it ^[17][22].

Railway companies abroad are paying attention. "Last week there was a company from the Indonesian railway sector that came to see the pilot project to convince themselves it was real and not a fake video," Scuderi told PV Magazine in July 2025 ^[4]. He said he is talking with an Italian rail infrastructure firm about setting up a pilot in Italy before the year is out ^[5]. Scuderi hopes the early results will speed up approval ^[15]. "We have demonstrated that the solar plant between the rails is safe," he said ^[6]. "The sooner we obtain final approval, the sooner our partners abroad will also be able to move forwards." ^[7]